Behavioral Design at Klaviyo

“What does a behavioral designer do?” is a question I hear a lot. Like any good behavioral designer my response varies by the context in which I answer it. But, there’s a common thread — as a behavioral designer I endeavor to design experiences that support individuals in achieving a self-defined goal.

Read more to learn about what behavioral design is and why we integrate it into our work here at Klaviyo.

We humans have a hard time doing what we want to do!

About half the time — yes, 50% of the time! — our best intentions fall into the gap between intention and action (source).

There are myriad reasons for falling into this gap: competing priorities, forgetfulness, etc. I know I struggle to realize my best intentions to drink enough water each day… each and every day! And, I’m not alone in this struggle. I have company in the gap between intention and action. Furthermore, each New Year many of us endeavor to meet our refreshed goals, then only 40% of us follow-through with these New Year’s resolutions! (source as cited in How to Change)

Behavioral design endeavors to minimize this gap between intention and action. This might look like supporting an individual as they work toward meeting that New Year’s resolution, a financial savings goal, developing a new skill, or growing a business. Behavioral design is agnostic about the action it’s supporting, as long as it is an action defined by the individual themself. Nudge authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein specify that libertarian paternalism seeks to “influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by the choosers themselves”. Similarly, behavioral design endeavors to support individuals toward realizing self-defined actions — actions that will make them better off, as defined by themselves.

To do this a behavioral designer always asks: How might we increase the likelihood that [target audience] completes [target action]?

And, we have a specialized toolbox to help reduce that gap between intention and action.

These tools include:

📚 Knowledge base of behavioral tendencies

🖼️ Behavioral frameworks, theories, and models

🗂️ Examples of interventions (which can serve as inspiration for analogous situations)

🌎 *But behavioral design is not perfect — its foundation is built on an evidence base informed by a western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (WEIRD) context (source). Organizations such as Busara are changing that.

At Klaviyo, we leverage behavioral design to support businesses in building their destiny.

Building a destiny is hard! Building a destiny is a complex series of intentions and actions. We leverage behavioral design at Klaviyo to incorporate what we know works — leaning on the evidence base of behavioral science — in supporting individuals to realize their intended actions.

So what is behavioral design?

• It’s a process to build interventions that increase the likelihood that [target audience] completes [target action].
• The process incorporates the evidence base of behavioral science.
• We apply the process to design interventions that (we hypothesize will) overcome the gap between intention and action.

Curious about how we do it?!

There’s more to come! We’ll share insights into how we’re learning about and applying behavioral design at Klaviyo.