Understanding when and how Klaviyo sets a profile's location

You will learn

Learn where to find location information for a profile, how it is used and updated, and more. When syncing or creating a new profile, Klaviyo determines the location and timezone information based on the profile's billing address. If a profile hasn't purchased, location and timezone are determined based on IP geolocation. 

Find location information in a profile

You can find the location for a profile by navigating to their profile page in Klaviyo, where the location is displayed in the header along with any contact information.

How locations are used and updated in Klaviyo

A profile's location and timezone are used when sending campaign emails based on recipients' timezones, creating location-based segments, or adding location/timezone-specific filters to flows.

Here is an example outline of how a profile's location and timezone information are set and updated:

1. A profile opens an email (but has never purchased): Klaviyo uses IP geolocation to update timezone and location.
2. A profile makes their first purchase: Klaviyo uses the billing address from the purchase event data to update location and timezone.
3. A profile purchases again: Klaviyo uses the billing address from the purchase event data to update location and timezone.
4. A customer update is pushed from an integrated eCommerce platform into Klaviyo: If a customer is updated more recently than their last order was placed, Klaviyo will overwrite the profile's location, and the most recent order billing address will be replaced with the customer address in the eCommerce platform.

IP geolocation

Klaviyo uses IP geolocation to set a profile's location when a billing address has not been received. When someone clicks through a Klaviyo email, subscribes via a Klaviyo signup form, or is otherwise captured by our web tracking snippet, we will identify the person and use the IP they are on to set their location.

Although IP geolocation is used as the industry standard, it can sometimes be inaccurate. Here are a few reasons you might see discrepancies between a profile's IP geolocation and where they are actually located:

• We check someone's IP whenever they open an email or are captured by our web tracking snippet. For example, if someone is on a trip to China when they open the email, their IP will reflect this, even if their typical location is in California.
• IPs are not static, and the location affiliated with an IP is also not static; this makes IP geolocation imperfect.

This is most relevant when you want to schedule a campaign that sends to each recipient in their own timezone. Depending on where a recipient was the last time they opened an email or opted-in via a signup form, it's possible that the timezone Klaviyo has recorded for a recipient at send time will not be the same timezone the recipient is in when they receive your next campaign.

Additional situations where we won't be able to get accurate IP data from email open events:

• If the Opened Email event, when tracked, goes through a proxy; this is true of emails opened in Gmail.
• If the Opened Email event is synced to Klaviyo through an integration, like Mailchimp. In this case, the IP we assess will be a Mailchimp server IP and not the actual email recipient's IP.

Update location information yourself

If you want to update any location-related properties for one or more profiles — either by manually importing this location data or using the API — you will need to reference the relevant Klaviyo property name:

• City: the city where they live
• State/Region: the state/region where they live
• Country: the country where they live
• Zip Code: the postal code where they live

For more information about properties and how to manage and update them, head to our guide on properties.

Additional resources

• How to create a location-based segment
• Profile properties reference