Ask most people what a B2C CRM is for, and they picture abandoned cart emails and post-purchase up-sells. This is fair enough, as that’s where most of the category grew up.
But Klaviyo, the autonomous B2C CRM, brings real-time customer data, marketing automation, and agentic AI together so brands can build more valuable customer experiences, and none of that is exclusive to online check-outs.
I’ve spent the last few years proving this as co-founder of FIXATE, a specialist CRM agency using email, SMS, WhatsApp, and direct mail across the customer journey. Our agency is cross sector, so we never limit ourselves to one industry.
Across 14 brands on Klaviyo, we work with real estate firms, fast-moving consumer goods retailers, co-working spaces, gyms, immersive cocktail experience venues, and more.
Almost none of them started out thinking they needed CRM marketing. Most were either sitting on outdated platforms, or they had no real marketing strategy at all.
Here's what I've learned building CRM strategies for businesses that don't sell on Shopify.
Real estate personalization drives higher open and click rates across million-profile lists
The real estate landscape
For our agency, real estate splits into two very different starting points:
- Build-to-rent developments across the UK that are brand new to email: They have no history and no legacy list, and they need a fresh start.
- Real estate agents who have the opposite problem: One real estate agent we work with was sitting on millions of contacts that they’d never properly engaged because they had no strategy.
Granted, real estate sales cycles can run for years, so some of that list won’t be relevant after a certain point.
But the size of the opportunity creates urgency: real estate agencies with millions of contacts need the infrastructure in place now, not just to win back old leads, but to serve people who won’t buy or sell for another 5–10 years.
Why Klaviyo works for real estate campaigns
Personalization is the wedge here. Real estate agents don’t have the plug-and-play Shopify or WooCommerce integrations that ecommerce brands take for granted, so development and strategy work is necessary to connect internal systems to Klaviyo using catalogs and custom objects. Teams also need to understand how this data will be useful to them in the future.
But once the infrastructure is built, the payoff is specific: a social feed can't show you listings in the exact zip code you’re house-hunting in, but an email built on catalogs and custom objects can. Data comes in from property portals as well as the real estate agent’s own website, and Klaviyo turns it into dynamic content in messages based on what each recipient is actually looking for.
A social feed can’t show you listings in the exact zip code you’re house-hunting in, but an email built on catalogs and custom objects can.
What makes reporting on real estate marketing complicated is the data itself. Ecommerce has one core question: Did they buy? But real estate has a dozen:
- What are they looking for? (e.g., 3 bedrooms, pets allowed, garden, etc.)
- Did they book a showing?
- Did they attend a showing?
- Did they book an appraisal?
- Did they attend an appraisal?
- Did they reschedule an appraisal?
- Did they cancel their showing?
- Did they list a property?
Layer these factors against personas like buyers, sellers, landlords, and tenants, and it’s a lot more than a standard automated flow can visualize on its own. We handle this by connecting Klaviyo data to custom dashboards through the MCP server, which gives us reporting that a spreadsheet full of raw conversion events never could.
The results: stronger opens, clicks, and conversions than the platforms we replaced
Our clients are seeing strong open, click, and conversion rates. Several of our real estate agent clients came from enterprise-level CRMs that were capable, but nowhere near as intuitive as Klaviyo.
Several of our real estate agent clients came from enterprise-level CRMs that were capable, but nowhere near as intuitive as Klaviyo.
Recipe-based content keeps consumer goods retail brands top of mind between store visits
The consumer goods retail landscape
The fast-moving consumer goods retail category covers any brand where the bulk of revenue doesn’t come from an online store, even if one exists. One snack brand we work with, for example, sells almost entirely through supermarket shelves, but still runs an ecommerce store, a membership program, and an app.
Why Klaviyo works so well for consumer goods retail
For a brand like this, the CRM strategy isn’t really about driving online purchases at all. It’s a content engine. The primary content type is recipes, which can be personalized using Klaviyo’s catalog API. Someone who typically cooks for two sees different recipes in their marketing than someone cooking for a family of 6.
This approach also allows us to optimize for an important hidden email engagement metric: forwarded emails. Our emails are highly forwardable because they are content-first, and every forward means more brand awareness.
Note that there’s no clean attribution here. Nobody clicks an email and buys a box of cereal from the shelf 10 minutes later in a way Klaviyo can track. But that’s the point: the brand is staying top of mind between the moment someone’s scrolling on the bus and the moment they’re standing in the supermarket aisle.
The results: stronger, more consistent engagement
Our clients are seeing strong open and click rates prove that people want the content. For shelf-first brands like these, staying in someone’s inbox with content they actually like is its own kind of win, even without a purchase to point to.
Automated flows convert co-working free days into full memberships
The co-working landscape
Most people want to try a space before they commit, which makes the gap between a first visit and a paid membership the most important part of the journey. Yet most operators rely on co-working platforms built for bookings and billing, not marketing, and their built-in messaging rarely goes beyond a basic newsletter.
Why Klaviyo works so well for co-working spaces
We built something better for a co-working operator with 6 London locations. Website pop-ups catch people who are curious but not sure: they sign up and get a free day. Then, a series of automations nurtures them from that free day pass toward full membership.
The other capability I'm excited about is geofencing. Let’s say someone downloads the co-working app for their free day but never actually buys a membership, and weeks later walks past a location again. In that scenario, a location-triggered push notification could nudge them back in at exactly the right moment.
As long as we can avoid messaging like “We saw you walk past” that may feel creepy or invasive, I think geofencing is one of the more interesting opportunities still on the table for this kind of business.
The results: more paying members, thanks to automation
The form-to-membership automation performed so well the client had never seen anything like it from a CRM before.
Gym member retention strategies built on class-booking data
The gym landscape
In the fitness industry, every member who stops showing up is a cancellation waiting to happen, and replacing them costs far more than keeping them.
But retention is only half the picture. Gyms also earn from personal training, premium classes, and add-ons like recovery suites, and each of those depends on reaching the right member at the right point in their journey.
Someone might train hard for a month, freeze their membership, and return with new goals. Without the data to see those shifts, gyms leave both retention and up-sell revenue on the table.
Why Klaviyo works so well for gyms
We’ve worked with one London gym for 3 years. They recently approved a custom integration between Klaviyo and their class-booking software.
Once that sync is live, it opens up a much richer set of automations:
- A congratulatory message after multiple visits
- Relevant nudges based on gym behavior, e.g.:The recovery suite for a member who's trained hard but never tried itPersonal training for someone who’s only been to the gym once since joining
- The recovery suite for a member who's trained hard but never tried it
- Personal training for someone who’s only been to the gym once since joining
Here, geofencing opens up similar possibilities as in co-working, too: if someone hasn't been in for a couple weeks and they're walking right past the gym, a well-timed, well-targeted nudge can bring them back before they cancel.
The results: early groundwork, with retention automations already mapped out
It’s still too early to report on results, since the deeper integration just got the green light. But now that the groundwork is in place, this client is in a good position to start experimenting with retention automations once the data connects.
Feedback-driven messaging fuels cross-selling across experience venues
The experience venue landscape
We work with a client that runs immersive cocktail experience venues across the UK, each with its own theme and story. At each venue, guests bring their own bottle, and bartenders build cocktails around it, in character, for the whole night.
Why Klaviyo works so well for experience venues
Because guests book online, this account behaves much more like ecommerce than any of the others on this list. That makes the CRM strategy simpler on paper: you can cross-sell someone from one experience into another, and because guests are part of the original booker’s party, Klaviyo allows us to build bespoke journeys for guests to become bookers themselves.
The results: more revenue from cross-selling across venues
This client is actively cross-selling between their venues and up-selling party guests to book their own parties. This is something we’ve never seen possible with other platforms, and it ultimately serves as a huge additional revenue driver.
