The Ultimate Guide to Push Notifications with Klaviyo

In this article we’re going to walk you through everything there is to know about using Klaviyo for push notifications – from why Klaviyo + MobiLoud is the perfect combination, to actionable advice on setting up powerful flows and segmented push notification campaigns in Klaviyo to drive engagement and revenue.

Keep reading for more!

If you don’t have your own app yet, and want to learn how easy it is to build and launch an app with MobiLoud, get in touch with us for a free consultation now!

Why MobiLoud’s Klaviyo Integration is Perfect for Brands Starting with Push Notifications

There are a number of great push notification services available today. But Klaviyo adding push notifications to their platform makes it the easiest way for many brands to start out.

Klaviyo is probably the most popular email marketing platform for eCommerce stores already. If you’re on a paid Klaviyo plan, you’ll have access to push notifications as well, meaning you don’t need to sign up for another service.

It’s also extremely valuable to have your email and push (and SMS, if you’re using this channel) in the same place. 

You want these channels to work in combination with each other, and being able to set up flows that touch customers on multiple channels is a huge plus.

MobiLoud’s Klaviyo integration makes getting started even easier. 

Our apps (check out some examples of brands we’ve worked with here) have a native integration with Klaviyo for push notifications, meaning we’ll set up all the necessary code to integrate your app with Klaviyo’s push feature.

As soon as your app is live, you’ll be able to start reaching out to customers with push notifications, with no extra dev work on your end, and no extra channels or platforms to juggle.

Setting Up Push Notifications with Klaviyo

If you’re already using Klaviyo for email marketing, there’s essentially nothing extra required to start using push notifications.

You should have Klaviyo integrated with your website already, perhaps via code, or their Shopify app.

Since MobiLoud directly converts your website into an app, this integration remains intact in your mobile app (as well as any other tools, features or integrations from your website).

Our native integration takes it a step further, though, directly integrating your app with Klaviyo for push notifications.

We do all of this for you when we build your apps. There’s nothing for you to do, and once your app goes live, push notifications will be ready to go.

Push notification opt-in prompt

All you need to do is configure your opt-in prompt, to ensure app users give their consent to receiving push notifications.

Klaviyo allows you to set up a custom prompt, like this example from Klaviyo's docs: 

Your custom prompt will be followed by the operating system’s native prompt:

How to Send Your First Push Campaign

Once your app is live, and push notifications are set up, you can start sending push notifications to subscribed users.

Here’s a basic walkthrough for sending a one-off push notification campaign in Klavyio.

First, click on “Campaigns” in the left sidebar.

This will contain all your campaigns, including email and SMS as well.

To start a new campaign, click the “Create Campaign” button, and choose “Push” as the campaign type.

Fill out the basic information about your campaign, and choose who to send it to (you could send it to all push subscribers, or a specific segment – we’ll discuss segmentation a little later).

Now set up the content for your notification, including the title, body and image (title and image are optional, though recommended for best results).

Specify the behavior settings for your notification, including the action that should happen when the user taps on the notification (we recommend you deep link to a certain page on your site).

Finally, hit “Save & continue”, review the details about your campaign, and either send it immediately or schedule for a specific time.

Sending a one-off push notification is fairly straightforward. There are some times you’ll want to send one-off campaigns like this, but for the most part, Klaviyo’s push notifications become particularly powerful when you utilize their advanced triggers and flows, which we’ll walk you through shortly.

Different Ways to Use Push Notifications

Once your mobile app is live, and you’re set up and ready to send push notifications in your Klaviyo account, there’s a plethora of ways you can use push notifications to boost engagement, retention and revenue.

Here are some ideas:

Sales and discounts
Push notifications can alert users to limited-time deals, exclusive offers, and flash sales. This not only drives immediate traffic but also encourages impulse purchases.

Product releases
Notify users when new products or features become available, keeping your audience updated and driving excitement for your latest offerings.

Events and holiday promotions
Push notifications are perfect for promoting special events or holiday-themed sales (such as Black Friday, Halloween, Easter, Christmas, Father’s Day/Mother’s Day), reminding users of key dates and using the natural excitement of the holidays to generate engagement.

Personalized campaigns based on browsing behavior
Leverage user data to send targeted notifications about products or content they’ve shown interest in, enhancing relevance and boosting conversion rates.

Abandoned cart notifications
Remind users about items left in their cart, incentivizing them to complete the purchase with offers like free shipping or discounts.

In-app minigames and contests
Engage users with notifications about fun activities like contests or games within your app, enhancing user interaction and retention.

Re-engagement campaigns
Send notifications to users who haven’t opened the app in a while, offering incentives or reminders to bring them back to your app.

App onboarding
Help new users get familiar with your app by sending onboarding messages that guide them through key features and setup steps, or simply send a “welcome” message to condition them to look out for more push notifications in the future.

Feedback requests
Use push notifications to request user feedback, including product reviews, after a purchase or interaction.

Shipping updates
Keep users informed about their orders with real-time shipping and delivery updates, enhancing the post-purchase experience.

Customer service updates
Notify users when their support requests are updated or resolved, improving communication and satisfaction with your customer service.

Rewards and loyalty program updates
Push notifications can remind users about points earned, reward milestones, or new perks available in your loyalty program, which drives engagement and excitement and hammers home the benefits they get from participating in the program.

How to Craft Effective Push Notifications

How you craft your push notifications can have a sizable impact on visibility and reaction rates, and the overall effectiveness of your campaign.

Here are a few tips on getting the most out of your push notifications:

Short, concise copy

Push notifications are an extremely short form of communication. At max, you have the following character limits:

• Android: 65 characters for the title, 240 for the description
• iOS: 178 characters total

Anything over this amount will get cut off.

That’s why you need to keep your message brief and to the point. There’s no space to write paragraphs. Use as few words as possible, and inject action-oriented verbs to inspire immediate engagement, such as “Shop Now”, “Unlock Your Offer”, or “Join the Sale.”

Use emojis and rich media

Emojis are shown to increase push notification reaction rates by 20%, while push notifications with rich media (e.g. images, videos) have a 56% higher open rate on average.

Emojis and rich media make your push notifications stand out more, and often communicate more than your copy can in the limited space you have to work with.

Sounds and badge notifications

With Klaviyo’s push notifications, you have the option to choose (for recipients on iOS) whether or not your notifications make a sound when delivered, and whether there’s a badge displayed on your app’s icon when the user has a new notification.

It’s up to you how you want to do this – enabling both will decrease the chance of your notifications being missed or ignored, though it will also make them more intrusive, which may slightly increase the likelihood that the user will disable notifications.

That said, users can simply disable sounds/badges, without disabling notifications altogether, so the risk seems pretty low.

With that in mind, enabling these features on your push notifications could provide a nice boost in engagement.

Timing and frequency

There’s a lot said about how many push notifications is too many, and the risk of over-sending, and causing the user to disable notifications (or delete the app entirely).

While this can happen, more brands are guilty of sending too few notifications than too many.

Data shows that retail apps have 2-5x higher retention rates when sending weekly notifications, and 3-6x higher retention rates when sending daily push notifications.

Some brands, like Temu and Shein, take this to the extreme, sending 5-10 notifications per day. While this might not be ideal for all brands, it does do a great job of keeping the app top-of-mind.

You might not want to send this many, but consider sending multiple notifications per week at least.

As for timing, experiment with different times and see what generates the best results (though you’ll probably want to avoid sending push notifications overnight, which may upset your users, especially if you have sounds enabled).

With MobiLoud and Klaviyo’s deep integration with your store, it will be easy to track results and see which notifications, sent at which time, have the highest visibility and drive the most revenue.

Personalization

It’s best practice to personalize your push notifications wherever possible.

The easiest way to do this is by adding your recipient’s name to the message (e.g. “Andrew, check out our new product drop!”).

You can go further and send targeted notifications based on the user’s activity and preferences, such as personal recommendations based on the kind of products a user tends to browse or buy most often.

Personalized push notifications have 4x higher reaction rates, while advanced targeting methods are shown to increase retention rates by up to 3x, so it’s worth it to spend some time to make your campaigns more personal and relevant to the user.

Check out this article for more on effective personalization strategies for push notifications.

Deep linking

Finally, in most cases you’ll want to enable deep links from your notification.

A deep link is when tapping on the notification sends the user to a specific page in the app, rather than the homepage of the app (which is the default behavior).

If you’re sending a notification for a specific product, or encouraging a specific action (e.g. a new product drop, or an abandoned cart notification), you’ll get higher conversion rates if you send the user directly to the page or action screen.

Leveling Up Your Push Notification Strategy with Klaviyo’s Advanced Features

You can have great results with simple, vanilla, one-off push notification campaigns. And if you’re not using any kind of push notifications yet, something as simple as sending a single manual broadcast each week is a great way to start, and should increase your app’s visibility and usage rate.

But Klaviyo is billed as a “marketing automation platform”, and there’s so much more potential for what you can do than just sending basic, manual broadcasts.

Once you’ve gotten your feet wet with push notifications, you’ll want to explore Klaviyo’s full feature set, and see how you can use these features (in combination with MobiLoud’s native integration) to level up your push notification strategy.

Here are some things you can do that will make push a truly pivotal tool for your business.

User segments

Segmenting users is a powerful way to serve hyper-relevant push notifications that convert at a higher rate.

With the wealth of data that Klaviyo provides for you, there are endless possibilities for user segments to create.

You can segment users based on:

• Interests (e.g. different product categories purchased)
• Demographics
• Purchase frequency
• Lifetime value
• Engagement rate

...and more.

To create a segment, from your Klaviyo dashboard, click “Lists & segments”, under the “Audience” section in the sidebar.

You’ll be able to view all your lists and segments here. Click the “Create New” button, then select “Create segment” from the dropdown to create a new segment.

Finish up by naming your segment and defining the conditions for which users will be included in the segment.

Event-triggered push notifications

The ROI on push notifications grows significantly when you start automating your push notifications, with messages triggered by certain events.

Sometimes known as transactional push notifications, these messages are automatically sent in response to a specific action from the user, such as an abandoned cart, or a purchase.

Automated, triggered notifications tend to be much more relevant and timely than a generic broadcast message, and thus are usually more effective.

To set up triggered push notifications, go to the “Flows” tab, and create a new flow. 

In your flow, you can define the event to trigger your flow, and segments or conditions to include/exclude from your flow, timing, and different messages to send.

For example, you could set up an abandoned cart notification that gets triggered when someone starts the checkout process, waits a few hours, and sends a notification if they didn’t complete their purchase.

Triggered flows and notifications are so effective because they work in the background, continuously running to serve timely push notifications that drive extra sales, with very little labor required once initially set up.

A simple abandoned cart notification like the example above can easily recapture at least 10-15% of otherwise lost carts, fully on autopilot.

Omnichannel Flows

Another powerful part of the Klaviyo platform is how it allows you to combine multiple channels in your flows, and reach customers on multiple touchpoints.

You can set up flows that include push notifications, emails and SMS. And if your user is subscribed to all three, you can reach them on each channel, all in the same campaign.

With a Black Friday campaign, for example, you might start with an email, followed later by a push notification, followed again by an SMS “last chance” message when the sale is about to end.

Or, you might set up an abandoned cart campaign, which sends a push notification, and then an email to follow up if the user didn’t react to the push notification.

You could also set up flows that direct different segments through different paths, depending on the channel they’re most likely to engage with.

There are some incredible possibilities for what you can set up with Klaviyo’s flows. By using email, push and SMS in combination, you can increase visibility for your campaigns, reach each customer where they’re most likely to respond, and ultimately get much better returns on your marketing efforts.

Analysis and iteration

Klaviyo is an amazing platform for the analytics they provide, and how it’s able to link your revenue back to specific channels, campaigns and flows.

You’ll want to make use of the data provided by Klaviyo to analyze how your push notification marketing is performing, and make constant improvements to get better results.

For each campaign or flow you create, check up on the revenue generated (or other relevant metrics, such as engagement/clicks, conversion rate), as well as deeper insights, such as which type of messages, which segments, or which stages of your flows get the best results.

For example, you might find that you get much higher engagement from promo campaigns sent to a certain segment, or it might turn out that people are more likely to take action after receiving multiple push notifications in a flow.

Use these insights to craft future campaigns and alter your flows to improve future results, by making decisions based on hard data, rather than hunches and assumptions.

Scaling Push Notifications

Once you’ve started implementing push notifications, and iterated on your strategy to figure out the ideal formula for optimal returns, the biggest challenge becomes scaling your push notifications.

Scaling tends to be one of the biggest barriers for brands with push notifications, as your reach is limited, not just to app users, but to app users who have push notifications enabled.

In comparison, it’s much easier to build a large email list and contact tens, or hundreds of thousands of people with your emails (though a lower percentage of your emails will be seen).

So the next step is to figure out how to increase the reach of your push notifications.

You can do this by:

• Getting more people to download your app, through app-specific promotions, first-time discounts for app users, and promoting your app in other channels, such as email.
• Optimizing your opt-in message at the right time to increase push subscribers.
• Minimizing the opt-out rate of your push subscribers, by always delivering value in your push notifications and optimizing your sending frequency.

The best part is that the cost of push notifications doesn’t scale as much as the potential return, as your subscriber base grows.

If you can effectively boost reach for your push notifications, this channel can deliver a truly incredible ROI, massively reducing your reliance on paid acquisition channels, and providing a big boost to cash flow and profitability.

3 Steps to Get Started with Klaviyo & Push Notifications

Any eCommerce brand that isn’t using push notifications is missing out.

Push notifications are a cheap and effective way to communicate with your customers and drive sales. The biggest barrier of entry is building your own app – but this is relatively simple with MobiLoud (and there are numerous additional benefits to launching an app besides only push notifications).

If you’re intrigued by the potential of push notifications, and perhaps already using Klaviyo for email marketing, here’s how to add push notifications to your toolbox:

1. Get a free consultation with the MobiLoud team’s app experts, to discuss the goals for your brand and how MobiLoud fits in.
2. Let us build and launch your app, which will include everything that works on your website, and push notification functionality built in.
3. Start onboarding your customers to the app.

That’s it. All the setup is done for you, and once you start getting app users, everything will be there for you to start building complex and powerful Klaviyo flows, with automated push notifications.

The Final Word

For more, you can check out our documentation on Klaviyo, as well as Klaviyo’s help center for push notifications.

To learn more about how MobiLoud works, and what’s possible with our platform, check out these case studies of successful, high-revenue brands who launched apps with us, or read more about why our approach is the ideal way for eCommerce brands to build mobile apps.

If you want to discuss in more detail with one of our team of eCommerce experts, get in touch for a free consultation now.

With MobiLoud, Klaviyo, and the amazing power of push notifications, you can take your business to new heights, and be at the crest of the mobile commerce revolution.