Requirements — Marketing MCP (Klaviyo)

Your marketing platform holds your customer list and can send to all of it. Get these in place before you connect anything.

Accounts and tools

• A Klaviyo account, or a similar email and SMS platform, already connected to your store.
• Owner or admin access, so you can create the API credentials the connection needs.
• A Claude plan that lets you connect MCP servers.

Data and material

• Your list in good shape: consent recorded properly, and nothing in it you shouldn’t be sending to.
• An inventory of your flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase and any others) and what each one is meant to do.
• Your campaign calendar, even a rough one.
• Brand voice notes, for anything Claude writes.
• Email templates built from your design system, so drafts come out on-brand. See the design system track.
• Clean product data helps a lot. See the platform track.

People and time

• One person who approves every send. On a solo store, that’s you.
• Someone who keeps an eye on deliverability and list health.
• Time to review AI drafts properly at first, while you learn where they need the most help.

Decisions to make first

• Draft or schedule. Whether Claude only drafts campaigns, or can also schedule them once a human has approved. Either way, a human decides what goes out.
• Scope. Which of campaigns, segments and flows Claude works on first.
• Customer data. What customer information Claude needs to see to do the job, and what it doesn’t.
• Review rhythm. How often your flows get looked at, and who signs off a change to one.
• Your first job. One campaign or segment to build together first.

Next: the Checklist, so you know what a 4 looks like before you start.