Consumer Spending to Follow Maslow's Hierarchy, feat. Jake Cohen, Director of Product Klaviyo

Apr 3, 2020

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Klaviyo's Director of Product Management joins us to talk about Klaviyo's COVID-19 response and their sudden transformation into a collaborative media organization. Using their own data and insights, as well as consumer research, they're helping businesses make real-time decisions during the economic fallout of coronavirus.

Main Takeaways:

What does the next generation and cutting edge commerce even mean anymore?
Phillip and Brian are joined this week by Jake Cohen, Director of Product at Klaviyo to talk all about how Klaviyo has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic
How can companies respond to this pandemic in a way that centers their customer's needs and wants?
March has been the longest year in history
What can insights regarding consumer behavior help brands better understand their customers?

A New Reality: How Klaviyo Has Adapted To Their Customers Needs:

Phillip and Brian are joined this week by Jake Cohen, Director of Product at Klaviyo, who was late but for an excellent reason.
Klaviyo decided that business, as usual, wasn't right in this new reality, so they repurposed half of their marketing team for an extraordinary project
Klaviyo spun up a news organization in three days (whoa) they've administered surveys to both consumers and brands to help both sides understand where the money is going.
Now they are spinning up content guides and tutorials to help brands address the changes that are happening every single day at this crazy time
Also, Jake announces a new part of the Klaviyo website that is 100% dedicated to this effort to help both companies and consumers (so cool).

COVID-19 Calamity: How Will The Crisis Change How Marketing Works?

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" (bad in politics, useful in our industry as long as it's customer-centric).
One of the fundamental truths of marketing: The truth about humans is that It takes triggers to get us to have action.
Klaviyo's primary goal is to help customers, which is why they've been building this new content goldmine.
Consumers usually break up buying into essentials and non-essentials: except now this has all been turned on its head (the emergence of the new essential category).
Klaviyo is working to bring all the insights directly to customers so that they can then use those insights to exist in this new world of spending and selecting.

Brands Coming Together: Business Coming Together In Partnership:

Recently, Phillip moderated a digital panel which Jake was on along with Olivia McNaughten from Yotpoo and Jan Soerensen from Nosto all about the current state of customer experience.
Is COVID-19 forcing companies to step it up and innovate?
One of the values that Klavivo has recently dusted off is that they work publically, and that ethos has helped guide this new project that aimed at helping business grow
SPEED> PERFECTION
Klaviyo is on track to publish 15 pieces of content on what is going on and what to do about it for 11 days!
Writers note: Our new in-episode music is my new favorite thing

The Story of Today: Stitching Together Insights For Better Buying:

So what is the story behind buying patterns and consumer behavior in this new world that we all somehow live in now?
Specific brand categories seem to be performing super well during this crisis: beauty and cosmetics seem to be staying healthy as part of the new essentials category
Fulfillment centers are working hard to ship out to their customer (and working with local government), but are also working hard to keep their employees safe with proactive and preventive measures.
Zoom works super well until it doesn't
Some brands are seeing massive bumps of anywhere to 200-1000% (over 50% of brands are seeing these enormous numbers)

Spending Shoots Up: People Are Buying Comfy Clothes:

So, where are consumers spending their money right now?
People are spending more, but they are putting their money into "new essential categories" aimed at making the fact that everyone is stuck at home maybe forever a bit more comfortable
March has been the longest month of Phillip's month (ditto).
Jake says that one way to look at spending is through Maslow's hierarchy of needs, each rung representing a different layer of consumer spending which may be one of the coolest ways to understanding how people are spending their money,
If you have kids, you have an entirely different set of needs (i.e., surviving and keeping your kids entertained)

If you want to check out Klaviyo's daily briefings and participate in their survey, click here →

Also, you can email Jake Cohen at and send him all your feedback on what they are doing.

As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What is the number one consumer spending insight that you have seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic?

Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin.

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