True-ish story:
I almost chucked my mf laptop from the second floor of my house to “fight back” against Klaviyo’s brain dead update to their email formatter.
While I didn’t actually chuck out my laptop, I heavily considered it. Because I am fuuuuuming right now.
So what brain dead update did Klaviyo make?
Well, after copying and pasting an email from Google Docs into Klaviyo, they now ask you a quick prompt before pasting:
They ask whether you’d like to keep the formatting or clear all of it.
Both of which are equally bad options and 100x worse than how their email formatter worked, just yesterday.
Here’s why:
Selecting to keep the formatting keeps your links clickable and your italics italicized. But it comes with a cost:
Every single line in your email becomes bolded, with no easy way to unbold the copy (besides the laborious process of going through each line by itself and clicking unbold—not even the CMD-B shortcut works, and you cannot unbold the entire copy itself).
After doing this, I then tried to delete the extra spacing Klaviyo created in their formatter. Only problem here was, and this is after spending 5 minutes (which is an absolute eternity in unbolding copy time), that when you delete any extra spaces Klaviyo added, it also nukes 90% of the copy you just pasted and unbolded.
The other option—to clear all your formatting—is only slightly better:
You don’t get to keep your links, your bolded copy, or your italics. Which means, you have to manually add each of these. You also don’t keep any line breaks between your lines, so you also have to manually go through, line-by-line, and add the line spaces your copy has in Google Docs.
But at least with this method, it doesn’t nuke 90% of your copy.
God, and to think I just convinced a new client to switch from MailChimp to Klaivyo. (And I’m always recommending Klaviyo to brands who don’t already use it, whether they’re clients or not.)
Hopefully this is just a bug. Otherwise, I may have to start thinking about switching my clients off of Klaviyo (because 5 minutes of “Klaviyo editing and formatting” across all the emails I write for clients on Klaviyo each month adds up quickfast).
Moral of the story?
Don’t make “updates” to your product or service that nuke the general experience your customers have. While I love and recommend Klaviyo, this could change in an instant. I’ve already complained from one of my clients' accounts (and if I’m feeling petty, I’ll complain from all the other Klaviyo accounts I have access to too).
Methinks many Klaviyo users (especially the power users like yours truly who live and die inside my clients’ accounts, and who are the absolute cream of the crop customers) are expressing the same concerns.
(Lesson in there)
And, despite how much “good will” you generate with your clients, mistakes like this eliminate it completely at lightning speed.
Alright, rant over:
If you need help growing your email revenue, hit reply and let’s chat.
John
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