The New Frontier of CRM: Personas, Wealth, and Influence in Klaviyo

Most DTC teams treat Klaviyo like a reminder system: abandoned cart nudges, winback drips, seasonal promos. It’s functional, but it’s flat. These automations are optimized for transactions, not for people.

The next wave of CRM is about shifting from what they did to who they are.

Why transactions aren’t enough

When all your segmentation is based on past purchases, you’re blind to context. A buyer who spends $200 once could be:

• A college student stretching to buy a gift, or
• A high-net-worth customer sampling your brand for the first time.

Treating both the same is a missed opportunity. One needs nurturing. The other needs concierge service.

Identity data closes this gap. And three categories matter most: personas, wealth, and influence.

Personas: the missing layer of context

A persona isn’t a lazy archetype. It’s a grouping based on patterns — lifestyle signals, demographics, behaviors, affinities.

• One cluster of customers may be performance-driven professionals, buying because of efficiency and status.
• Another may be family-focused buyers, optimizing for utility and value.

If you send both the same “10% off” blast, you’re not just wasting money. You’re burning relevance.

With OuterSignal data inside Klaviyo, you can segment by these personas and craft flows that finally mirror reality.

Wealth: knowing who your most valuable customers are

Every brand has whales. But not every whale looks obvious.

• Some buy modestly at first but sit in the top income bracket — they’re primed for upsell.
• Others buy heavily but are actually discount-driven and unlikely to sustain.

Wealth segmentation lets you separate potential for growth from short-term spikes. You can tier offers, experiences, and outreach accordingly.

Example: Affluent buyers can be invited into premium bundles, loyalty programs, or high-touch experiences — while aspirational buyers may need value-driven messaging and financing options.

Influence: your hidden acquisition channel

Some of your buyers already command audiences. They’re trainers, stylists, consultants, micro-influencers. When they talk, people listen.

The brands that win are the ones that treat influence as a customer attribute, not just a media buy.

• Instead of hoping for organic shoutouts, you can systematically identify influential customers.
• You can seed products strategically, automate follow-ups, and even loop them into structured ambassador or affiliate programs.

One influential buyer can drive more incremental sales than a thousand generic clicks.

How to operationalize it

This isn’t about building 200 segments and drowning your team in complexity. It’s about a control system.

1. Three core properties in Klaviyo: persona, wealth tier, influence level.
2. A segmentation spine: every campaign and flow maps back to those attributes.
3. Guardrails: suppression rules so high-value buyers don’t see discounts unless strategic.
4. Measurement: every send has a control group by persona/wealth/influence to track incremental lift.

This creates a system that scales, instead of chaos that burns bandwidth.

Why now

CAC volatility isn’t going away. Creative costs aren’t going down. The next advantage comes from knowing your buyers better than anyone else.

OuterSignal enriches Klaviyo with the signals you need. Personas, wealth, and influence aren’t “nice-to-haves.” They’re the foundation for the next decade of profitable growth.

Your CRM shouldn’t be a receipt printer. It should be a growth control center.