Most e-commerce brands treat email marketing and paid advertising aka Performance Marketing as two separate channels that live in two separate parts of the business. Email Marketing is over here. Performance Marketing (Paid Social and Paid Search) are over there. They utilize different tools, have different teams, different metrics, and different strategies.
Now, time for some truth. That separation between Email Marketing and Performance Marketing is leaving money on the table. You can optimize your spend and be so much more efficient when you tie them together.
Klaviyo is not just an Email Marketing platform. It is a customer data platform, which means it is sitting on a detailed, permission-based record of who your customers and potential customers are, what they have bought, how much they have spent, and how engaged they are with your brand. That data is exactly what Meta and Google need to show your ads to the right people at the right time. Connecting the two gives your Performance Marketing a significant advantage that most of your competitors do not have.
Here is how to put your Klaviyo data to work for your ad spend and make it all run more efficiently.
How the Klaviyo Integrations with Facebook and Google Work
Klaviyo has native integrations with both Meta Ads (which runs Facebook and Instagram ads) and Google Ads. These integrations sync your Klaviyo segments to the ad platforms as Custom Audiences, meaning you can use any segment you build in Klaviyo as a targeting group for your paid campaigns.
The sync is automatic once the integration is set up. When a subscriber enters or exits a Klaviyo segment, the change is reflected in your custom audience on the ad platform within 24 to 48 hours. This means your audiences stay current without manual exports or uploads. Mind blown!
Setting up the Facebook integration requires connecting your Klaviyo account to your Meta Business Suite and authorizing the Klaviyo app to sync audiences. The Google Ads integration works similarly, connecting through your Google Ads account. Both integrations are available under Integrations in your Klaviyo account settings.
Suppressing Current Customers from Acquisition Campaigns
The first and most practical use of Klaviyo data in your ad campaigns is suppression. If you are running acquisition campaigns to attract new customers, you are probably paying to show ads to people who have already bought from you. Depending on your list size and ad spend, that waste adds up quickly.
Syncing your existing customer list from Klaviyo to Facebook and Google as a suppression audience removes your current customers from your acquisition targeting. You get cleaner reach to truly new audiences, and your cost per acquisition improves because you are not spending budget on people who already know you.
This is one of the fastest, highest-leverage improvements most brands can make to their paid advertising setup, and it takes less than an hour to implement.
Using Lookalike Audiences Built from Your Best Customers
Once you have your existing customers synced to Facebook as a custom audience, you can use that audience as the seed for a lookalike. Facebook’s lookalike audience tool takes a source audience and finds people who share similar characteristics: demographics, interests, behaviors, and engagement patterns. The better the quality of your seed audience, the better the lookalike.
Rather than using your full customer list as the seed, try using a high-value segment from Klaviyo as the source. In Klaviyo, you can build a segment of customers who have made three or more purchases, or customers with a lifetime value above a certain threshold, or customers who have purchased in the last 90 days and have high engagement scores. Syncing that segment to Facebook gives you a seed audience made up of your most valuable customers rather than your average ones.
A lookalike built from your best customers will attract better prospects than a lookalike built from your full list, because you are telling the algorithm to find people who look like the people who spend the most and come back the most.
Retargeting Email Subscribers Who Have Not Purchased
Your email list most likely contains a meaningful number of subscribers who opted in, received your Welcome Series, but never purchased. At LTM Digital, we like to store these in a segment called “Non-Purchasers” and they are an important audience for your business. These are warm leads who chose to give you their email address. They are interested in what you sell. They just have not bought yet.
Syncing your Non-Purchaser segment from Klaviyo to Facebook and Google lets you retarget them with paid ads. You can build a Klaviyo segment of subscribers who joined at least 30 days ago, received your welcome flow, and have zero purchases. Sync that segment to both ad platforms and create a dedicated retargeting campaign for them.
Because these subscribers already know your brand, your retargeting messaging can be more direct than cold prospecting. You do not need to introduce yourself or re-introduce yourself. You can focus on overcoming whatever objection has kept them from buying: social proof, a first-order incentive, a product education angle, or a customer story that builds confidence.
Re-engaging Lapsed Customers Through Paid Channels
Winback campaigns in email marketing are effective, but not everyone on your lapsed customer list is still opening your emails. Some of them have tuned out of your email channel entirely while remaining reachable through social and search. It’s time to re-engage.
A Klaviyo segment of customers who have not purchased in 120 or more days and have not opened a Klaviyo email in 90 or more days is a high-value audience for a paid win-back campaign. These are people who bought from you before, so they already have a purchase relationship with your brand, but your email channel is no longer reaching them effectively. Paid ads give you a second path back into their awareness.
Winback messaging in paid ads/performance marketing should feel different from cold prospecting. Acknowledge that it has been a while. Lead with something new that has happened since they last visited. Or offer a compelling comeback incentive. The goal is to re-establish the relationship and get them back into your purchase cycle.
Excluding Unsubscribes and Suppressed Contacts
Just as you suppress customers from acquisition campaigns, you should consider suppressing unsubscribed and opted-out contacts from paid campaigns where appropriate. Someone who explicitly opted out of your email marketing has signaled that they do not want more communication from your brand. Continuing to show them ads after they unsubscribed can create a negative brand experience.
Klaviyo makes it easy to sync your suppression list to Facebook and Google as an exclusion audience. This is a relatively simple step that protects your brand relationship with people who have clearly indicated their preference.
Using Klaviyo Segments to Personalize Ad Messaging
Beyond targeting and suppression, Klaviyo data can help you make your ad creative more relevant by matching the message to where the customer is in their lifecycle.
A segment of new subscribers who have not purchased can see a first-order welcome ad. A segment of one-time buyers can see messaging that encourages a second purchase, perhaps featuring complementary products or a loyalty offer. A segment of VIP customers can see an exclusive preview or early-access campaign. A segment of people who have viewed a specific product category without purchasing can see ads for that category with a confidence-building message.
The same segmentation logic you use in email applies directly to your paid channels. Your Klaviyo data lets you match the ad message to the customer’s relationship with your brand, which improves relevance and reduces wasted spend.
Measuring the Impact of Cross-Channel Data
When you integrate Klaviyo data into your paid campaigns, you gain the ability to compare performance between segments in a way that a traditional ad campaign setup does not allow. You can see whether your lookalike built from high lifetime value (LTV) customers outperforms a lookalike built from your full list. You can see the conversion rate difference between retargeting warm subscribers versus cold prospecting. You can see how much your acquisition cost per purchase drops when you apply proper customer suppression.
These comparisons give you a clearer picture of where your ad budget is doing the most work and where it is not. Over time, that visibility helps you make smarter decisions about how to allocate your ad spend.
If you want help connecting your Klaviyo account to Meta and Google Ads and building out your first cross-channel audiences, we are happy to help walk through the setup with you.
Continue reading: The essential Klaviyo integrations every store should enable and Klaviyo segmentation guide: How to stop emailing everyone the same thing.