Klaviyo’s reports are misleading to you.
This is part 3 of our series on why your software’s built-in reports are NOT telling you what you need to know.
E-commerce brands rely on Klaviyo not just for email & SMS marketing, but many also use it for revenue tracking.
And here’s the problem:
⭐ Klaviyo Takes All the Credit
If a customer sees a Facebook ad, then later opens an email and buys, Klaviyo claims 100% of that revenue.
Every time.
Your real marketing ROI? Distorted.
Your paid ad team? Undervalued.
Your budget? Misallocated…
If you’re a CMO you end up shifting more spend into Klaviyo-based marketing when, in reality, paid ads or organic search may be doing the heavy lifting.
❗Fix it:
Use multi-touch attribution!
(Remember our attribution series #lazyanalystattribution?)
Extract Klaviyo’s revenue data, and compare it against ad spend, first-touch sources, and blended CAC in a BI tool.
⭐ There’s No True Profitability Reporting
Klaviyo shows gross revenue, but ignores key costs like:
Discounts, refunds, CAC, and COGS.
That means your campaign could be driving tons of revenue but negative profit, and you wouldn’t know!
❗Fix it:
Your finance team shouldn’t have to patch together spreadsheets.
Pull Klaviyo data into your BI tool, layer in costs, and track real profit, not just revenue.
⭐ No Customer Journey or Cohort Analysis
Klaviyo treats each email campaign like an isolated event, meaning it doesn’t tell you what happens after the first purchase.
But don’t you need to know the following things?
Do Klaviyo-driven customers come back and buy again?
How long between purchases?
Are different cohorts behaving differently (e.g. Black Friday buyers vs. subscription sign-ups)?
❗Fix it:
You need cohort analysis. Duh.
Extract Klaviyo’s customer data and blend it with Shopify, GA4, and ad platform data to track how different groups behave over time.
If you have all that data coming through Klaviyo perfectly, extract it still!
That’s what we recently did for a healthcare e-com client.
Their Klaviyo data is no longer behind locked doors and we were able to present the whole customer email journey as well as create cohort analyses.
So.
If you’re making big budget decisions based on Klaviyo’s reports, you might be:
→ Overinvesting in email while underinvesting in paid ads.
→ Thinking you’re profitable when you’re actually losing money.
→ And missing out on key customer behavior insights that would improve retention.
Stop relying on what your software wants you to see.
Extract your data.
Build the reports you actually need.
Make data-backed decisions that drive growth.
