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How to create an SMS welcome flow

You will learn Learn how to create a welcome flow for your SMS subscribers.  As a best practice, your SMS welcome flow should be separate from your email welcome series.  What is a flow? A flow is an automated series of actions or messages that sends after someone performs a specific action. For an SMS welcome flow (also called a welcome series), this means that after someone consents to SMS, they’ll automatically get messages welcoming them into your SMS program Why use a welcome series for SMS In a welcome flow, SMS messages offer you a way to make a more immediate impact on new subscribers.  On average, most text messages (~98%) are looked at within 90 seconds. In comparison, only 20% of emails are viewed, and it typically takes between 90 minutes and 3 hours for customers to view said emails.  The shorter time frame means you can reach SMS subscribers when their interest in your business is at its peak. It is a great chance to encourage them to move further down the funnel — driving them from being a subscriber to a customer. SMS welcome series best practices There are a couple best practices to keep in mind when creating an SMS welcome series:  Keep the series between 1 to 3 messages to not overload your subscribers. Make your messages short and to the point. Set up a virtual contact card so your customers can add you as a trusted contact. Note: virtual contact cards are treated as MMS messages.  You may want to turn off quiet hours for the first SMS message in the welcome series. However, if you do so, you may need to remove all marketing material, including coupons, from the message.  Before you begin Before you send any messages from an SMS welcome series, you should have: Set up SMS in Klaviyo Optional: created a coupon  Optional: set up virtual contact cards (US and Canada only) Why do I need to set up SMS? You must have turned on SMS in Klaviyo before you can add SMS messages in your flows. Otherwise, you’ll be prompted to set up SMS while you’re trying to build your flow.  Why should I have a coupon and how do I create one? When someone signs up for text messages, they are really giving you a direct line of communication. You’ll be able to reach them at any time almost instantly. Due to how personal SMS is as a channel, it’s a best practice to reward anyone who subscribes to SMS. If you have not already created a coupon and want to know how to do so, click the name of your ecommerce platform from the list below:  BigCommerce Magento 1 Magento 2 Shopify WooCommerce PrestaShop What are virtual contact cards and why should I set them up? Virtual contact cards allow recipients to save your contact information. This way, they’ll know when messages are coming from your brand and will recognize your SMS sending number.  These contact cards are particularly useful in welcome flows, as that’s the first text message someone will receive from your brand.  Note that these cards automatically turn your text into an MMS, and will count as more credits than an SMS. Further, because MMS is not available in the UK or Australia, virtual contact cards can only be sent to US and Canadian subscribers.  Before you can use virtual contact cards, you must turn on this option in your SMS settings page. Create an SMS welcome series There are 2 ways you can build an SMS welcome series in Klaviyo: Use a pre-built template (recommended). Build it yourself without a template. We go over both scenarios below.  Use a pre-built template to build your SMS welcome series This is the easiest and fastest way to create an SMS welcome series. We recommend using this approach, as you’ll be ready to start sending in less than 5 minutes.  The templates include placeholders for a coupon. If you have not already created a coupon, we recommend doing that first. To use a pre-built template for your welcome flow:  Click Flows. Click Create Flow in the upper right-hand corner. Search “welcome” and select the text bubble icon to only show SMS flows. Pick an SMS welcome flow. Here, we chose the flow called “Unique Discount w/ Reminder.” Name the flow.  Click Create Flow. Click into the first SMS. Review the message text and replace any placeholder text (such as for a coupon code). Click into the second SMS in the flow. Review the content and replace placeholder text with the coupon. When you’re ready for the flow to be live, click Review and Turn On.  Build an SMS welcome series without a template We strongly recommend using a template rather than building an SMS welcome series without one.  However, if you do decide to build the series yourself, follow the steps below to create a 1-message SMS welcome flow:  How to build an SMS welcome flow without a template Click Flows. Click Create Flow in the upper right-hand corner. Click Create From Scratch. Name the flow (e.g., SMS-only welcome). Click Create Flow. Choose Metric as the trigger type. Click into the flow trigger dropdown.  Select Subscrib

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How to create a push welcome series

You will learn Learn how to add push notifications to your welcome flow to target those who download your mobile app. Before you begin Unlike with email and SMS welcome flows, a push welcome series is not triggered when someone subscribes to a list or opts in to SMS. Your development team must configure a custom metric using Klaviyo’s APIs that triggers when someone installs or otherwise takes a specific action in your mobile app. Before you can send push notifications, note that: You have to set up push notifications in your Klaviyo account.  Only app users that consent to notifications will receive push notifications from you. When an app user opts in to receive notifications, they will be assigned a push token that allows you to target them with notifications through both campaigns and flows in Klaviyo. Create a welcome series for app users There are 2 ways you can set up a welcome flow for push subscribers:  Recommended: Use a custom metric from your app (e.g., signed up for app). Create a segment based on if someone can receive mobile push marketing and trigger a segment-triggered flow. Note that segment-based flows can take longer to trigger than metric-based flows, so this is not recommended unless your app has no way to sync new users to Klaviyo. Add a push notification action Follow these steps to create a welcome series for your push subscribers triggered by a custom metric: Using the main Klaviyo navigation, go to the Flows tab. Create a new metric-triggered flow triggered by your app’s custom metric or a segment-triggered flow triggered by your segment of subscribers that can receive push marketing. Click the trigger of the flow. Next to Profile filters, click Add. Add a profile filter to remove anyone who has ever been in this flow. See the example below: From the left sidebar, drag the push notification action into your flow. Edit the message title and body, typically to thank the person for downloading your app. Example:“Thanks for joining our app!” Select the Behaviors tab. Select what should happen when a recipient taps on the notification - open app, or deep link. For iOS: Choose whether to show a badge count. Choose if you would like subscribers to hear a sound when they receive the push notification. When you are done, click Save & continue.  In the Push notification details sidebar, choose whether you would like to Skip recently messaged profiles, which enables/disables Smart Sending. This setting is disabled by default. We recommend keeping it off for welcome series flows. Optional: Add additional filters to the push notification. Add a time delay after this message.Note: Like with SMS, push notifications ping a recipient’s phone, so sending too often may overwhelm your recipients. For larger flows, such as those with more than 3 messages, avoid sending a push notification every day. Add and configure 2-3 push notifications, adding time delays between each message. Once you're finished configuring your push notifications, set the status to live. Best practices Message content Make sure your push notifications contain relevant and actionable information related to your app. Avoid overusing emojis. Multiple repeating emojis are often associated with spam. Here are some examples of content to include in your push notifications listed in order of importance: Thank people for subscribing. Remind them to fill out their profile. Remind them to set their location. Ask for feedback on your app’s setup experience. Mention any features that are relevant to a new app user. Split based on customer actions Depending on the content of your push notifications, you may want to use conditional splits to check if a customer has performed specific actions (e.g., set up their profile) before sending a relevant notification. Depending on your app’s design, you must either set up custom metrics or custom profile properties to use with these splits. The above example shows a flow triggered by a segment of profiles with who can receive push marketing. If a custom metric is used instead of a segment, use a conditional split to check for the ability to receive push marketing or flow filters to filter out profiles that do not have a push token. Time delays Make sure to add appropriate time delays between your push notifications so you are not overwhelming your subscribers.  For a welcome series flow, we recommend the following delays: Message #1: no delay Message #2: 1 day Message #3: 3 days Other messages: 3+ days Troubleshooting If you are using a custom metric to trigger your flow and it is no longer triggering, contact the developer who configured this metric for your custom integration or the developer of your third-party integration for further assistance. If you are using a segment-triggered flow but it is not triggering, make sure your segment has “someone can receive mobile push marketing” as part of the definition. Segment-triggered flows only send to people who enter the seg

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How to create an email welcome series

You will learn Learn how to create a sequence of emails sent directly after someone subscribes to hear from your brand. This is a critical moment in the customer lifecycle because it's your opportunity to introduce new, interested prospects to your business and product offering. With a welcome series, you should capitalize on this display of interest. Your email welcome series should be separate from your SMS welcome series flow, since subscribers may sign up to email and SMS at separate times and can only enter a single welcome flow once. An SMS welcome series is also recommended for using features such as virtual contact cards and coupons in SMS messages. Learn more in our article on creating an SMS welcome series. A welcome series is a crucial automation, and Klaviyo provides a pre-built welcome series out-of-the-box. You will find an example welcome series flow listed in the Flows tab of your account. If you want a more advanced welcome flow, you can browse different ideas in our flows library. Need assistance with your flow? If you already have a welcome flow set up and are looking for ways to troubleshoot an issue, learn how to troubleshoot a list-triggered flow. Understand how contacts are added to a list Before setting up a welcome series, you must connect it to a list of your choosing. After creating your account, an empty list titled Email List is pre-populated into your List & Segments tab. You can use this for your welcome series flow or create a new list. Whichever list you choose should be the list new subscribers are added to when they sign up. There are four key ways new contacts can be added to a list to trigger a welcome series: By signing up through a signup form By signing up through a subscribe page By being manually added to a list Via the Lists API or via the Subscribe API Pause your welcome series if you are importing a list If you have already set your welcome series live and want to import a list, you must first set the series to manual. If not, everyone who was imported will be scheduled for the first message in the series, even if they subscribed months ago. Follow these steps to import: Open your welcome series flow associated with your main list. In the top right of the flow builder, click Update Action Statuses. In the dropdown, select Manual. Click Update Statuses. Follow our guide on how to import contacts into a list. Repeat steps 1-2, then set your flow back to Live. After the import is complete, you can manually send welcome messages to older contacts you imported. Open the flow builder for your welcome flow. Click on the first message. In the Performance section of the sidebar, click View details. Click into the Recipient Activity tab. Click Needs Review. For any imported contacts you’d like to send welcome emails, click Send next to the email in the Needs Review list. Alternatively, you can click Cancel All to prevent these contacts from receiving the message. Repeat this step for any other messages in the flow. You may want to ensure that contacts who subscribe through your ecommerce integration are being added to the correct list. For example, many Shopify themes have a default newsletter sign-up form in the footer. While this is not a Klaviyo form, contacts who sign up using this form can still be added to a list in Klaviyo.  To verify if contacts who subscribe through your integration are being added to a list, and which list they are being added to, by following these steps: In the bottom left of the main Klaviyo navigation, click the name of your account. Click Integrations. Click on the name of your ecommerce integration. In the integration settings, if you're able to sync contacts to a particular list with your integration, make sure your main list is selected. See this example for Shopify: Additionally, if you have any live Klaviyo signup forms, ensure these forms are also pointing to the same list. Understand double vs. single opt-in lists By default, every list in Klaviyo is double opt-in. This is to protect your deliverability and ensure contacts who are added to your lists have a valid email address or phone number. We recommend leaving this setting on for your main list. The workflow for a double opt-in list is as follows: A contact signs up.  The contact receives a confirmation text or email. Once they confirm their subscription, they are brought to the opt-in confirmed page. The contact is added to the list. The contact triggers the welcome series. If the first welcome message is set to send immediately, they will receive the first message. Learn how to enable single opt-in and more in our guide on the double opt-in process. Use Klaviyo's standard welcome flow When you create a Klaviyo account, you can easily add a pre-built welcome flow titled "Welcome Series" into your account.  To set up this flow: Navigate to the Flows tab in your Klaviyo account. On the card for Welcome Series, click Get Started.If you have n

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How to use sign-up forms to offer tiered discounts

You will learn Learn how to use sign-up forms to offer different discounts to different types of customers, then set up your welcome series so each subscriber receives the appropriate discount. Setting specific targeting settings in your forms can help you avoid offering discounts unnecessarily and tailor the language in your emails based on what you already know about your contacts. Before you begin Consider what customers you want to target and how you want to incentivize them. For example, you may want to incentivize site visitors to sign up for your email list by offering a discount on their first purchase. You may want to offer: 15% off to visitors who are new to your site and have never purchased before 10% off to visitors who have previously browsed your site but never bought No discount to those who have bought from you in the past This is something you can accomplish using a combination of segments, sign-up forms, coupons, and flows.  Click to expand for other example use cases  Targeting shoppers with high-value items in their cart with larger discounts than low-value shoppers.  Targeting VIP customers with a different welcome offer and messaging than your other customers. Create segments of audiences you would like to target When building a new segment, you can identify the audiences you would like to target with offers on your sign-up forms. In our example, we're going to isolate four groups and the definition to follow in the segment builder to create each one: Visitors who have been to our site fewer than 3 times and never purchased (20% off) Visitors who have visited our site 3 or more times and never purchased (15% off) Visitors who purchased more than 180 days ago and haven't bought since (10% off) Visitors who have purchased in the last 180 days (no discount) Navigate to Audience > Lists & segments > Create list / segment >  Create segment. Name each segment after its definition so you can easily keep track of each one.  Browsed fewer than 3 times and never purchased You can build this segment by identifying people who have been active on your website fewer than 3 times over all time. Alternatively, you can restrict this to a specific timeframe, like 90 days, to narrow down your audience. Browsers who are not cookied will not fall into this segment since no email address will be available. To target this group, follow the steps outlined below. Next, you'll want to add a condition specifying that they haven't ever placed an order. Browsed 3 or more times and never purchased Here, you'll want to isolate people who have been active on your website at least 3 times over all time. You may also want to include browsers who have viewed at least 3 products over all time. Again, you can also restrict this to a smaller time period, like 90 days, if you would like. Next, add a condition specifying that they've never placed an order before. For this condition, be sure to extend the timeframe to all time. Purchased more than 180 days ago and haven't bought since In this segment, you'll want to identify people who have purchased before, but not in the last 180 days. This is a good group to offer a discount that reflects the messaging you have in your winback series. Purchased in the last 180 days Lastly, you want to target people who have bought in the last 180 days to encourage them to sign up for our email list, however, we're not going to offer them a discount since they have bought somewhat recently. Build segment-targeted sign-up forms Once you've built the segments you would like to target, the next step is to create a separate form to target each group and prompt them to subscribe to your main list. Navigate to the Sign-up forms tab and choose a template from the library or to build a new form form scratch. Use the editor to design the form to match your brand. In the Styles tab, select a form type. We recommend choosing a popup, flyout, or a full page form so that you can capture shoppers' attention. In the Targeting & Behaviors section, you will want to configure a couple of key settings: Under Targeting, you will want to show the form only to those in one of the 4 corresponding segments you just built. Under Targeting, you will also want to exclude those who are already on your list from seeing the form. Since we didn't include a condition that someone is not on our main list in the segments we built, this setting is particularly important. Depending on whether or not you have double opt-in enabled (by default, double opt-in is enabled for all lists), be sure to update the language on your success message by clicking Success. If you are choosing to use static coupons, or are a Shopify user, you can also include the coupon code directly on the success message. You will likely only want to do this if your list is single opt-in to prevent people from signing up to receive the discount but not confirming their email address. If your list is set to double opt-

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How to target contest entrants with flows

You will learn Learn about best practices for marketing to contest subscribers as well as tagging contest entrants in order to add them to a welcome series. Contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways attract a lot of sign-ups and can be a quick way to grow your list. However, many of those who opt in expect to only receive information about these events, and might not be interested in being part of your general list. It’s important to keep these subscribers separated from your main list until they confirm their interest. SMS marketing for sweepstakes is only permitted on US and Canadian short codes. Learn more about compliance requirements around sweepstakes and contests.  Tag contest entrants The best option for targeting contest entrants in a welcome series is to tag these subscribers and then create a separate list and flow for them. This approach works well regardless of whether you are using Klaviyo or a third-party service or product to run your contest and grow your list. While you could use tags to separate contest entrants in an existing welcome series, anyone who previously went through this flow wouldn’t go through it again (since people can only go through a list-triggered flow once). For instance, if someone signed up for your email list, and later signed up for a contest, they wouldn’t get the welcome emails for the contest as expected. Add contest entrants to a new list To add entrants to a new list: Click the List & Segments tab and then Create List / Segment > List. Name the list something descriptive (e.g., Contest Participants). Set your sign-up form to send entrants to this list. Tag contest entrants using a sign-up form The steps below apply to Klaviyo sign-up forms. If you are using a third-party sign-up form, follow their documentation to add identifying or hidden properties. You can design a sign-up form from scratch or use a template from the Sign-up Form Library, but either way, you can customize the content to suit your brand and contest. When creating a sign-up form, consider how you want to contact entrants and include a text input for an email address and/or phone number.  In addition, you need a button to submit the form and tag the entrants. From the form builder overview, click Add Blocks. Drag a button onto the form in the form builder. Under Button Click Action, change the action to Submit Form. Choose the list that triggers your welcome series flow. To tag contest subscribers, add a new or select an existing profile property under Submit Hidden Fields and give it a value. In this case, the profile property is Contest and the value is Contest Entrant. It is a best practice to always tag profiles with source information, as if someone unsubscribes from a list, you may lose context about how they got into Klaviyo. In addition, add a note to say that submitting this form will opt in the contact to general marketing. Including this message means that you will be able to add engaged entrants to your main list. Create a flow for contest entrants only Next, create a welcome series flow based on this list. You can create a flow from scratch, by using a template from the Flow Library, or by cloning another flow. The last of these is the easiest option if you have already set up a welcome series flow. Simply copy it from the Edit Flow dropdown menu by clicking Clone Flow. Change the name to be more descriptive and set the trigger to be the list you created for your contest. Create or change the content and timing of the messages by following the best practices mentioned at the top of this article. Best practices for crafting content for contest entrants Keep in mind that these subscribers originally signed up for information about a specific contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes, so not everyone will be as invested as someone who signed up for your general list. To help prevent those who are less engaged from hurting your deliverability, there are a few best practices you can follow: Reduce the number of messages in your welcome series (to avoid overloading these subscribers) Send messages that offer high-quality content and avoid those that sell products/services Include a noticeable unsubscribe link in all emails Remind recipients why they are receiving these messages (e.g., because they signed up for a certain contest) For the first message in this series, it is a good idea to say “thank you”, and to include details about the contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes. Doing so can not only serve as a reminder about why the recipient has received this message (so they know it's not spam) but also help manage their expectations about when they will receive more information. In addition, remember that many contest entrants might have already gone through your regular welcome series. Adjust your content so that it is different enough to still provide value to those who received similar messages from your regular flow. Add engaged entrants to your list After this seri