We're a Klaviyo-First Agency. Here's Why We Won't Hire a "Klaviyo Expert"

We've been hiring for a retention/email strategist role this month. Hundreds of applicants, literally. About a dozen made it to an actual interview.

Quick aside before the real problem: 80% of candidates get discarded before I even watch their Loom properly, because they're sat in a beanie and a tank top, or their mic sounds like it's been underwater for three weeks. If you're applying for a remote role, dress and sound like you want the job. It costs you nothing and most people still won't do it.

The more worrying trend is what I'm calling Klaviyo Brain Box Disease, and it's spreading through this industry faster than anyone's talking about.

What is "Klaviyo Brain Box Disease"?

It's what happens when someone's entire frame of reference for retention marketing is the inside of one piece of software.

The symptoms show up the same way almost every time:

• An inability to think outside the confines of the channel (email)
• Zero experience beyond Klaviyo as an ESP
• No knowledge of eCommerce operations and the wider ecosystem around it
• An obsession with Klaviyo Attributed Revenue that everything has to lead back to

Klaviyo-attributed revenue is a vanity metric dressed up as a business metric, the same way open rates and click rates are. It gets gamed easily and it tells you almost nothing about whether the channel is actually growing the business. A strategist should know that going in. A specialist builds their entire identity around it.

The test that exposes the problem in about ten seconds

I start every interview the same way now. I show candidates a Shopify Analytics report: new customer revenue plunging year-on-year, returning customer revenue roughly flat.

There's no single right answer here without more context on the business.

But the more pertinent point is what happens next.

Over 50% of the candidates I've asked have said they'd need to see inside Klaviyo first to diagnose what's going on.

Think about what that actually means. I'm showing them something that happens upstream of Klaviyo entirely, before a customer ever lands in an email flow, and their instinct is to go check the one tool they know. That's not a knowledge gap. That's evidence of how narrowly this industry has conditioned people to think.

Retention is downstream of acquisition. If new customer revenue is collapsing, the answer is almost never going to be sitting inside your ESP.

The second test: would you still do this if it hurt conversion?

The next slide is a pop-up success message. Someone subscribes, the front-end promised them an offer, and the success page just says a generic "thanks for subscribing."

I ask candidates where that offer code should actually be shown.

80% say it should be sent by email instead of shown on-screen.

So I push further: would you still do that if it was proven to hurt on-site conversion?

All of them said yes. Their logic is that a customer having to go check their inbox for the first email creates a deliverability signal and a long-term retargeting opportunity.

Sit with how illogical that is for a second. Roughly 80% of customers will never buy from a given DTC brand a second time. Yet we've got a generation of marketers who'd rather protect an email open than get the product into a first-time buyer's hands at the moment they're most motivated to claim it.

That's not retention strategy. That's optimising for the channel at the expense of the business the channel is supposed to serve.

Why I'm reconsidering how we screen for this role

I've built Magnet Monster almost entirely around Klaviyo expertise, so this isn't a dig at the platform. It's a dig at what "expert" has come to mean inside it.

There are more people Klaviyo-certified than ever, because Klaviyo's certification path is genuinely fast to complete. That's good for Klaviyo. It's not the same thing as being a retention strategist, and treating the two as interchangeable is exactly how we ended up here.

Here's what I'm seriously considering for how we screen candidates going forward:

1. If you've only ever worked on Klaviyo, with no experience on another ESP, you're disqualified. Not because Klaviyo is the wrong tool. Because never having worked outside it is a signal you've never had to think about why a platform works the way it does.
2. Prioritise candidates who've come from acquisition or growth roles but still have retention knowledge. They tend to be more pragmatic about what a channel can and can't do, and they've usually already been forced to think in business metrics rather than channel metrics.
3. Layer in eCommerce-specific screening questions that have nothing to do with email at all. Shopify Analytics literacy, basic unit economics, what actually drives a repurchase in a given category. If a candidate can't engage with those, the Klaviyo skills underneath them don't matter much.

What this means if you're hiring for this role yourself

If you're a brand or an agency owner going through the same hiring cycle, don't let "Klaviyo expert" or "Klaviyo certified" do the screening for you. Those credentials tell you someone's spent time in the tool, not that they understand why a brand's returning customer revenue is flat while new customer revenue falls off a cliff.

Ask the same two questions I've been asking. Show them a new-vs-returning customer graph and watch whether their first instinct is to open Klaviyo. Show them a post-signup flow and ask where the reward should actually live, then ask if they'd still choose that if it cost conversion.

Their answers will tell you more in ten minutes than three years of Klaviyo certifications will.

My advice if you're the one applying

There's a genuinely massive number of people out there who are Klaviyo-qualified right now, because the platform's growth has been incredible. That's exactly why it's not a differentiator anymore.

There's hardly anyone around who can actually live up to the title of retention strategist. If you can build even basic fundamental knowledge of eCommerce growth, acquisition, and business-level metrics on top of your channel skills, your upside from here is close to limitless.

The bar isn't high. Almost nobody's clearing it and that's your opening.

FAQ

What's the difference between a Klaviyo expert and a retention marketing strategist?

A Klaviyo expert knows the platform: flows, segmentation, deliverability, Klaviyo's own reporting. A retention marketing strategist can diagnose a business problem like falling new customer revenue or a broken post-purchase experience and knows when the answer isn't inside the ESP at all. Platform knowledge is a prerequisite for the role, not the whole job.

Why is Klaviyo Attributed Revenue considered a vanity metric?

Because it's easy to inflate without actually growing the business. Attribution models can be generous, and a channel can look like it's driving huge revenue while the brand's total new and returning customer revenue tells a different story. It should be tracked, but never treated as the scorecard for whether retention marketing is working.

Does being Klaviyo certified mean someone is a good retention hire?

Not on its own. Klaviyo's certification path is designed to be completed quickly, so certification volume has grown enormously as the platform has grown. It proves someone has learned the tool. It doesn't prove they understand eCommerce fundamentals, acquisition, or how to read a business problem that sits upstream of email entirely.

How do you screen for retention marketing skills beyond Klaviyo knowledge?

Test for business literacy before channel literacy. Show a candidate a new-vs-returning customer revenue report and see whether their instinct is to ask about the business or to ask to look inside the ESP. Ask about a conversion trade-off (on-site reward versus email deliverability, for example) and see whether they can reason about the trade-off at all, rather than defaulting to the email-first answer by habit.

This article originally appeared on my LinkedIn newsletter here. If you'd like more of this in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube channel for weekly DTC retention strategies, extracted straight from the brands we work with. No fluff, just actionable plays.

Related reads

• Klaviyo Agency vs Full-Service Retention Partner: Which Fits Your eCommerce Brand?
• How Long Does Klaviyo Certification Take?
• Is Klaviyo Easy to Learn? A Comprehensive Guide for Email Marketers
• How to Choose the Best Klaviyo Agency for Your Shopify Store: 6 Questions to Ask
• How Does Klaviyo Work? The Ultimate Guide to Flows, Segmentation, and AI