Choosing the right email platform for your business is not the simplest task, but it actually gets easier when you’re a global brand with global needs. Out of the many ESPs out there, only a few can efficiently cater to global audiences.
Most brands come down to comparing Omnisend and Klaviyo, which is reasonable as those two are arguably the biggest names in the email marketing industry. Even though they’re both popular, the choice for global brands becomes clear once you research their capabilities.
Let’s look at the facts that matter for businesses focused on global customers.
SMS reach and accessibility
Email is one thing; you can send emails anywhere, anytime. SMS, on the other hand, requires more work to make accessible, and it’s incomparably more effective when it comes to urgent, action-demanding messages.
Omnisend doesn’t restrict itself to a local audience. Their SMS capabilities go beyond borders, so you can schedule SMS campaigns across the globe. Everything is native and ready to go, you don’t need to look for integrations or add-ons.
Additionally, Omnisend provides a flexible billing model for SMS credits. First, you get $1 worth of free SMS credits to try it out. Second, you can top up the credits with small amounts. Third, if you don’t use up all the credits in a month, they roll over to the next one, so you don’t lose what you paid for.
Klaviyo is not as competitive when it comes to SMS. You can only send SMS campaigns to subscribers in 18 countries, and if you have customers outside those regions, you’ll need to look for a second platform just to fulfil your SMS needs.
Also, the pricing is rather unforgiving. You have to buy the credits in expensive blocks, and if you don’t use them up in time, you lose them. Klaviyo doesn’t allow for credits to roll over to the next month. Generally speaking, Klaviyo is more of an email and automations tool, so SMS capabilities are not their main focus.
Managing multiple international stores
Some businesses prefer to have all their stores under one roof, others decide to split up brand accounts based on region for simplicity. If you only use one account for every region, you can skip over to the next section. But if splitting up accounts by country sounds interesting, keep reading.
Omnisend allows you to have one master account and multiple sub-accounts. It’s mostly made in response to agencies’ needs, but it also works perfectly for businesses managing multiple stores. You don’t need to maintain tens of usernames and passwords, since all the stores are kept under one master login. On top of that, you can copy-paste high-performing workflows between stores, which eliminates the need to build everything from scratch on a new store.
Klaviyo treats every account as a separate entity. They focus mostly on one-store brands, and don’t provide the functionality to have several accounts under one login. If you chose Klaviyo as your ESP, you’d have to maintain a sheet with all the usernames and passwords. Aside from being inconvenient, it also creates a security risk.
Support availability across time zones
Having a global brand means running your store 24/7, no matter what. When the US customer base is off, Europe and Asia is awake and alive. If anything happens or breaks, you may need to contact support to help fix the issue immediately.
Omnisend provides 24/7 live chat and email support to everyone, regardless of free or paid plans. If you’re facing an issue, click the support widget, explain your problem, and a human support agent will be with you in a few minutes during daytime, nighttime, and weekends.
If you want to fix it yourself, there’s a massive library of articles in their help center that includes step-by-step tutorials, feature explanations, most common problems, and YouTube videos.
Compared to Omnisend, Klaviyo restricts its support heavily. Free users only get email support for the first 60 days. After that, you have to choose a paid plan to continue getting support. Still, even after you become a paying customer, the support response times and availability varies based on the tier of your plan. They do, however, have a large list of help center articles to help you fix your problem on your own if it comes to it.
For the highest-paying customers, email response times are lower, but if you’re on a “Marketing” plan, for example, you’ll still need to wait 1-2 days for a response. Weekends are also locked behind another add-on plan that comes with its own pricing.
For example, if you’re paying $400 a month, you may get priority support with Klaviyo, but with Omnisend you’ll have your own dedicated account expert at that price.
For these reasons, Omnisend is not only better for global brands, but also for any other brands of any size. You get enterprise-grade support without spending an enterprise-level budget.
Customer segmentation
Sending the right message to the right person has been a new reality for a while now. Mass-messaging generic emails still works, but nearly not as good as personalized, timely messages.
From this perspective, Omnisend is powerful without being clunky. You no longer need to segment audiences by hand, as you can simply use the new AI tool, enter a prompt like “at-risk customers who open emails but don’t click”, and have a segment ready in seconds. You may still have to do it by hand for more complex segments, but for most segments that modern businesses need, you can rely on the prompt-based tool to save time.
Klaviyo also has a similar tool where you can use prompts to build customer segments, but it only becomes available via paid plans, whereas Omnisend allows you to use it even on a free tier. Klaviyo does, however, have stronger segmentation functions when you’re doing it manually, so if your global brand requires extremely complex or niche segmentation logics, Klaviyo will fulfill your needs better.
If you want to handle large, growing contact lists without making things excessively complicated, Omnisend is a powerful choice without the technical overhead. But if you need preciseness and complexity, Klaviyo is the way to go.
Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Verdict
Choosing the right platform affects your ability to effectively communicate with your global audience. Klaviyo is a strong tool for deep segmentation and analytics, but it creates limits for global brands. The limited SMS reach is an especially big setback.
Omnisend is built for growth, and works for ecommerce stores of all sizes. It allows you to communicate with your audience via both email and SMS on a global scale, and provides unrestricted 24/7 customer support when you need help.
Omnisend also provides a unique migration service for brands looking to switch platforms. If your Omnisend plan costs $250/month or more, you’ll get a dedicated person who manages the entire migration process end-to-end: contacts, automations, segments, templates, and more. All of that is free of charge and takes up to 5 business days.
Klaviyo, on the other hand, can either provide you with guides to do it yourself, or refer you to third-party agency partners who have their own fees.
If you want a tool that’s focused on growth without providing overkill complexity, Omnisend is your go-to choice.