Overview

Klaviyo and Shopify's standard buyer had always been the marketing manager—the practitioner responsible for campaigns and customer communications. But moving upmarket to enterprise accounts required a fundamental shift in approach. Rather than assuming the same buyer and messaging would work at scale, the strategy began with research: understanding who actually makes decisions in enterprise ecommerce organizations, what their priorities are, and how they differ from mid-market practitioners.

Challenge

Many companies assume upmarket means selling the same product to bigger companies with the same buyer profile. Klaviyo and Shopify recognized this was wrong. In enterprise organizations, buying committees include CFOs, CTOs, and COOs—operators whose evaluation criteria, budget concerns, and business pressures are entirely different from marketing managers. Without understanding this shift, content and messaging would miss the mark. The real challenge was conducting the research to uncover who these buyers actually are and what they care about.

Solution

Klaviyo and Shopify invested in deep customer and partner research—interviews and conversations designed to understand the enterprise ecommerce landscape and buying patterns. This discovery revealed that enterprise decision-makers prioritize platform scalability, operational efficiency, compliance, and ROI—not marketing features. Armed with this insight, the program created vertical-specific guides addressing these operational and financial priorities, positioned Klaviyo x Shopify as strategic infrastructure, not marketing tools. Content syndication through industry channels established thought leadership with C-suite operators. Complementary field events created intimate settings for direct relationship building: a wellness spa event in Los Angeles targeting wellness and beauty enterprise leaders; a hat bar experience at the Shopify event space in New York for specialty retail and CPG operators. The entire strategy flowed from one insight: your upmarket buyer is different, so you must understand them first.

results

• 8 net new enterprise customer accounts sourced

• $1.2M in primary sourced ARR from enterprise segment

• $4.8M in influenced enterprise pipeline

• Successfully shifted buying committee from marketing manager to C-suite (CFO, CTO, COO)

• Vertical-specific content established differentiation in competitive enterprise landscape

• 48% close rate on enterprise opportunities (industry-leading conversion)

• Demonstrated viability of content-led approach for complex B2B enterprise motions

• Established repeatable template for vertical-focused upmarket campaigns