2026 Email & SMS Marketing Strategy: Insights From 100 Audits
2026-03-10 14:47 Diff
https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/email-sms-marketing-priorities-2026

Every planning cycle starts the same way.

You’ve got a list of ideas, a list of problems, and not enough time for both. Fix flows. Refresh creative. Grow lists. Improve reporting. Add personalization. Try something new.

The hard part is deciding what matters first.

In 2025, Klaviyo’s digital strategy team completed nearly 100 account audits across B2C brands. The goal wasn’t to hand out a grab bag of optimizations. It was to spot patterns that show up again and again when you look closely at what’s running, what’s missing, and what’s quietly leaking revenue.

When we compared recommendations across those audits, a short list kept resurfacing. These aren’t flashy projects. They’re the priorities that make the rest of your program work harder.

If you’re setting your 2026 roadmap, start here.

Split your welcome flow by purchase status

The most common fix was also one of the simplest.

Brands were sending the same welcome experience to everyone, including people who had already bought. That’s how you end up discounting a customer who did not need a discount, and sending “here’s why you should trust us” messaging to someone who already trusted you enough to purchase.

A new subscriber and a new customer need different things.

Build two paths.

If someone hasn’t purchased yet, your welcome flow should do three jobs:

  • Remove doubt: Make it easy to understand what you sell, who it’s for, and why it’s worth it.
  • Build confidence: Use proof that actually helps someone decide, like reviews, guarantees, and clear expectations.
  • Create momentum: Give them a next step that feels easy, like a curated collection, a quiz, or a best-sellers set.

If someone has purchased, your welcome flow should shift immediately:

  • Confirm they made a good call: Reinforce the decision without overselling it.
  • Set expectations: Shipping, care, setup, and “what happens next” content reduces post-purchase anxiety.
  • Invite a second purchase with intention: Lead with relevance, not a reflexive discount.

This is how your automation starts sounding like a customer experience strategy, not an autoresponder.

Fix identity and attribution basics before you optimize messaging

If your reporting feels confusing, it usually is.

A lot of teams jump straight to creative tweaks and send-time testing, then wonder why results look inconsistent. In many audits, the bigger issue was measurement and identity settings that made it harder to trust the story the data was telling.

Before you rework what you send, pressure-test what you’re measuring.

Look for gaps like:

  • Where customer activity is undercounted or hard to connect across sessions.
  • Where attribution settings no longer match how your customers actually shop and convert.

When those basics are off, optimization becomes guesswork. When they’re solid, your segmentation sharpens, your automation has more signal to work with, and you can defend priorities with confidence.

Here’s what to do in Klaviyo specifically:

Extended ID and attribution settings showed up in nearly two-thirds of audits—and for good reason. If your measurement is fuzzy, every downstream decision gets harder.

Many brands were missing Extended ID entirely. Klaviyo’s Extended ID allows brands to identify more site traffic. By enabling Extended ID, brands can then use that data for segmentation, flows and more. This means smarter campaigns and larger flow volumes for your brand. Turn this on today!

For attribution windows, many brands used settings that no longer reflected how customers actually behave across devices and channels. The result was undercounted performance, misleading channel comparisons, and an incomplete view of what’s driving revenue. Ensure your attribution uses Klaviyo’s best practices to ensure reports help drive smarter decisions.

This was the most common technical quick win from 2025 and fairly easy to implement.

Remove mobile friction from sign-up

List growth is not a mystery. It’s often a user experience problem.

In many audits, brands had demand, but they were making people work too hard to subscribe, especially on mobile. Too many fields. Awkward layouts. Steps that feel small in a builder and huge on a phone.

Your sign-up experience should feel effortless on the device your customers actually use.

A practical checklist:

  • Audit every form on your phone, not just in your editor.
  • Keep the ask tight and focused.
  • Make the next step obvious, fast, and thumb-friendly.

Better acquisition feeds everything downstream. You get more people into your flows, more first-party data to personalize with, and more room to grow without relying on paid traffic to do all the work.

Add high-intent flows you’re still missing

Some automation wins are hiding in plain sight.

Price-drop and low-inventory flows showed up in nearly half of audits because many brands still haven’t built them. That’s a miss, because these are high-intent moments you don’t have to manufacture. The customer already raised their hand.

Start simple:

  • One message for a price drop.
  • One message for low inventory.

Then improve based on what you learn. If engagement is strong, add a second touchpoint. If it’s weak, adjust the offer, the timing, or the product logic before you add volume.

High-intent flows are one of the cleanest ways to drive incremental revenue without flooding your entire list.

Treat BIMI as a brand trust play

Inbox competition keeps getting tighter. Recognition matters.

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) can help your logo show up next to your emails in supported inboxes. That’s not a vanity move. It’s a trust move.

When your brand is easier to recognize at the point of delivery, you give subscribers one more reason to open, and one less reason to hesitate.

If you’ve invested in brand, your email program should benefit from it.

Why these priorities hold up in 2026

You do not need a new channel or a new trend to improve results.

You need a program that’s built on fundamentals that scale, like segmentation that respects intent, measurement you can trust, sign-up experiences that do not frustrate people, and automation that shows up when customers are actually deciding.

Get these right, and the rest of your roadmap gets easier to prioritize, easier to test, and easier to defend.