How to Send or Schedule a Campaign in Klaviyo

Joseph Hsieh

January 22, 2021

Sending campaigns in Klaviyo has never been easier. With the 3-step process, you can send or schedule your campaigns in minutes. However, there are a couple of things that need to be explained so you can fully utilize the features they offer. For that purpose, we will go through the entire process of setting up and sending or scheduling a campaign.

From the dashboard click on Campaigns. Here you can find all your sent, scheduled, or drafted campaigns. To create a new campaign, click on the “Create Campaign” button in the top right corner.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_1 — To create a new campaign, click on the “Create Campaign” button in the top right corner

In the first section of the next window, you need to name and tag your campaign. Tagging campaigns isn’t mandatory but it’s a good practice to do it if you want to be able to group Campaigns by a tag. Later you can filter the campaign by tags (Promotional, Product, Content, Black Friday, etc.) and review your campaigns easier.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_2 — Name and tag your campaign

The next step is to set the audience, the Smart Sending, and the UTM tracking parameters.

Audience

To select the List or Segment you want to send the campaign to, click on the dropdown menu as shown in the image below.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_3 — Select the audience for this campaign

After selecting your list, at the lower part of the “Recipients” section, you will see “Estimated Recipients” information. This is a raw calculation of how many people on the list will actually receive the email. In this calculation, Klaviyo removes duplicates, invalid addresses, suppressed profiles, etc.

You also have the option to select a List or Segment you want to exclude from this campaign. You can select this list by clicking on the “Don’t send to” dropdown menu.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_4 — Select which lists or segments you want to exclude from this campaign (if any)

The next part is the Smart Sending.

Smart Sending is a feature in Klaviyo that checks if the subscriber who is scheduled for the campaign has received an email from you recently. If you turn Smart Sending ON, anybody who received an email within the pre-set hours/days will be skipped in this campaign. The default smart sending protection time is 16 hours, but this can be adjusted based on your needs. You can edit the Smart Sending time in Account -> Settings -> Email Settings, under the “Smart Sending Period” section.

Using Smart Sending is the recommended option when you send campaigns to your less engaged subscribers. This way, you can avoid overwhelming their Inbox and stay away from Spam complaints.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_5 — Smart Sending will exclude subscribers who have received an email from you recently. You can enable or disable it based on your needs.

The last step of this section is to set the tracking. The tracking (or UTM) parameters will help you track your success in analytical platforms like Google Analytics.

If you don’t need the UTM tracking for your campaigns, you don’t have to enable it. If you do need the UTM tracking, you can enable this option and Klaviyo will automatically assign UTM parameters to the campaign based on the name of your campaign and list.

If you want to assign custom UTM tracking parameters, you can enable the “Customize tracking parameters” option.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_6 — Set the UTM tracking parameters if you want to track your subscribers’ behavior with analytic tools

Now that the recipients part is all set, click on the “Save & Continue to Content” button in the bottom right corner. This will bring you to the content part of your campaign.

Content

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_7 — Pick the type of content you want to use for this campaign

First, you’ll need to set a couple of basic information for this campaign.

Sender name: This will be shown as the sender’s name in the recipient’s inbox.
Sender email address: This will be shown as the sender’s email in the recipient’s inbox. This is also the email address to which you will receive the “reply-to” emails.
Subject: This is the Subject Line of the email.
Preview Text: The Preview Text is the text that comes after the Subject Line in the recipient’s inbox.

After you set these parameters, the next step is to create the content of your email.

In the lower part of this page, you can see 3 options:

Text Only
Drag and Drop
HTML

Let’s explain what each of these means.

Text Only

If you want to send a text based email that looks like it was sent directly from a regular email service provider (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.), this is the option for you. If you choose the “Text Only” option, you will be redirected to a simple email editor with the basic text editing options. Here, you also have access to the source code of your email, so if you want, you can add custom HTML to your email.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_8 — If you choose the “Text Only” option, you will be redirected to a simple email editor with the basic text editing options

This type of emails are recommended for the warmup process of your subscribers or for sending emails that contain some vital information. Because these emails don’t contain images, custom tables, or complex HTML, and they are fairly small in size, they often land directly into your subscribers’ inbox, avoiding spam or promotional filters. This is why you can notice that the largest companies like Google or Apple, often send text based emails when it comes to delivering important information.

After you finish creating your text based email, click on the “Save Content” button to return to proceed with the next step of sending your campaign.

Drag and Drop

The last option is the most used option when it comes to sending your regular campaigns. This option provides 2 benefits. You can choose from a large library of pre-created, themed email templates or you can choose one of your templates that you’ve created earlier in the “Email Templates” section.

Themed Email Templates

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_10 — You can choose one of the preset layouts and start building your email from there

Klaviyo offers templates from different niches and different layouts. You can choose the template that best fits your needs and adjust it further with your own text and images.

Basic

In the “Basic” section, you have a visual representation of how different combinations of rows and columns look in the email. You can choose one of the preset layouts and start building your email from there.

My Templates

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_11 — From the “My Templates” section you can choose one of your previously created templates in the “Email Templates” section of Klaviyo

This is the most used option when it comes to preparing regular campaigns. Here, you can see all the templates you have created in your “Email Templates” section. The reason this is the most used option for selecting an email template is consistency with the style of your emails.

To avoid creating your email from scratch over and over every time you send a campaign, we recommend creating a “Base Template” that will contain most of the blocks and features you use regularly in your emails. In your base template you can adjust the font size, color, navigation bar, footer, email size, and everything else that you don’t expect to change in the near future. Save that template in your Email Templates, and every time you start working on a new campaign, you can select that template and simply adjust the body of your email to match your needs for that campaign. This way you can save on time, reduce the risk of mistakes like forgetting to put a link in your logo or navigation bar, and most importantly stay consistent with the style of your emails.

We have written several tutorials on some of the more advanced features in the template editor that might help you in designing your email. You can check them here:

Choosing either one of these options will bring you to the template editor where you can further adjust your email and get it ready for sending. After you finish, click on the “Save Content” button and you will be redirected to the previous window.

HTML

You can use the “HTML” options if you want to code your email. If you select this option you will be redirected to an HTML editor where you start coding your email.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_12 — You can use the “HTML” options if you want to code your email. If you select this option you will be redirected to an HTML editor where you start coding your email.

Although using HTML to create your email might give you more liberty in the design and layout, you need to be sure that the code will be rendered correctly across all different email providers and all the different apps and devices used for email.

After you finish coding your email, click on “Save” and you will be redirected to the previous window.

Now that the content part is ready for sending, you need to proceed to the last step. Click on the “Review & Send Campaign” button in the bottom right corner.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_13 — Proceed to the last step. Click on the “Review & Send Campaign” button in the bottom right corner

In the “Content” part of your campaign, you can set A/B Tests for the campaign. You can test different Subject Lines, Preview Text, or different content.

Review Your Campaign

The next page you will see is a checklist where you can see and confirm the basic information about your campaign. We recommend never to skip this part. Read carefully all the points in this checklist and confirm that everything is as supposed to be. You’ll be surprised to know how many times a simple mistake can be overlooked which can lead to sending a campaign to the wrong audience, with typos in the Subject Line or with the wrong sender’s Name.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_14 — Read carefully all the points in this checklist and confirm that everything is as supposed to be

After a careful review of the checklist, click on the “Schedule or Send” button in the bottom right corner to proceed to the final step of your campaign.

Schedule or Send Your Campaign

Clicking on the “Schedule or Send” button will show a pop-up where you can choose whether you want to Schedule or Send your campaign.

Schedule Your Campaign

If you want to schedule your campaign for some time in the future, select the left box as shown in the image below.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_15 — If you want to schedule your campaign for some time in the future, select the left box as shown in the image

Now you need to set the sending Date, Time, and Timezone. Select the date and time and from the dropdown menu that will appear. After selecting the sending time, you need to select a timezone. If you select May 31, 2021 at 12:00 am in the “Pacific” timezone for example, your campaign will be send on May 31, 2021 at 12:00 am according to the Pacific (PT) timezone.

One very useful feature that Klaviyo offers is the “Recipient’s Local Timezone”. If you have subscribers in your list that are located in different timezones and you select one specific timezone for sending your campaign (e.g. US/Pacific), all people in your list will get the campaign at the same time. Although people from the selected timezone will get the email at the set time, people from different timezones will receive the email at different hours.

For example, if you have people on your list that are located in Los Angeles and in London, you need to know that those two cities are 8 hours apart where 10:00 am in Los Angeles is 5:00 pm in London.

That’s why, if you have people from many different locations and you select a specific timezone for your campaign, some people might end up receiving your email in the middle of the night and the Open Rates will be very low.

This is where “Recipient’s Local Timezone” comes into help. Klaviyo tracks the IP of your subscribers whenever they interact with one of your emails and it stores that data to use in situations like this one.

To give you a better understanding of the difference between using a specific timezone vs recipient’s local timezone option let’s set another example.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_16 — Set the time, date, and timezone

If you select May 31, 2021 at 10:00 am in “Recipient’s Local Timezone”, each of your subscribers will receive this email on May 31, 2021 at 10:00 am in their local timezone.

After you finish setting the date, time, and timezone, click on the “Schedule” button and your campaign will be scheduled. You will be redirected to the “Campaigns” section in your Klaviyo account where you can see your Campaign with a “Scheduled” status.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_17 — After you finish setting the date, time, and timezone, click on the “Schedule” button and your campaign will be scheduled

Send Your Campaign

To send your campaign immediately, select the right box that says “Send Now” and click on the “Send Now” button.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_18 — To send your campaign immediately, select the right box that says “Send Now” and click on the “Send Now” button.

After you click on the “Send Now” button, Klaviyo will immediately start sending emails to your subscribers and you will be redirected to the “Campaigns” section where you can see your campaign with status “Sent” or “Sending” for larger audiences.

how-to-send-or-schedule-a-campaign-in-klaviyo_19 — After you click on the “Send Now” button, Klaviyo will immediately start sending emails to your subscribers

We always recommend scheduling campaigns instead of sending them at the moment. This way you still have time to act if you change your mind or you want to do some last minute changes.