Templates and design glossary

You will learn

Learn key terms related to email, SMS, and push templates in Klaviyo.

Glossary

Call to action (CTA): A CTA indicates the primary action you want a message recipient to take (e.g., a “Shop now” button). A well-designed email should have 1 primary call to action.

Display options: Display options govern when, where, and how a particular block or section should appear. To edit display options, select a block or section, then click Display in the panel on the left. These options include desktop, mobile, or both; show/hide logic; and content repeat rules.

Drag-and-drop blocks: Blocks of content (e.g., text, images, and tables) you can add to an email template when building in Klaviyo’s drag and drop editor. Learn about the types of blocks available in Klaviyo.

Dynamic content: Any content you add to a message that varies based on the recipient (i.e., template tags and variables). This includes variables like first name, or a custom unsubscribe link. Learn about the dynamic content available in Klaviyo.

Email editor: Klaviyo’s drag-and-drop email template editor, which allows you to create and customize emails. Alternatives to the email editor include using Klaviyo’s text-only editor or custom-coding an HTML template.

Email template: The contents of an email built in Klaviyo. Once an email template is created, you can add it to a campaign to send to a group of contacts or use it in a flow to send automatically when a contact meets certain criteria.

Email template library: A library of pre-built email templates. Access the library by navigating to Content > Templates > Email library. These templates are fully customizable.

Layout: Layouts are ways of grouping blocks in an email template. Klaviyo’s layouts include Columns (to display blocks side-by-side) and Section (to add blocks above or below each other). To find these layouts, open Content > Basic in the email editor, then scroll down to the Layout section.

Personalization: The various tags used to add personal information into emails, SMS, and push messages. This includes profile personalization (i.e., special Klaviyo properties), custom personalization (e.g., tags based on custom profile properties), unsubscribe and manage preference links, and event data.

Source code: Text blocks previously included a Source code view for editing a block’s HTML directly. This view has been removed. To add conditional or repeating content using Django tags, select Insert in the text toolbar, choose a tag type, configure it, and click Save. For direct HTML editing, use a dedicated HTML block.

Styles panel: Where you can adjust the styling settings for a full email template. This includes an email’s background color, default text fonts and colors, margins and padding, and more. Adjusting a template’s styles only affects the template you are currently working in.

Template: Email content built in Klaviyo.

Template tag: Predefined tags that populate things like an unsubscribe link or today’s date. Template tags are surrounded by a set of curly brackets and the percent symbol, and look like this: {% unsubscribe_link %}.

Universal content: Saved blocks or sections that can be reused across email templates. When you publish changes to a universal block or section, those changes apply wherever that content is used, including scheduled campaigns and live flows.

Variable: The text inside tags that populate a customer’s information (like their first name, location, or interests) in a template. In addition, in a metric-triggered flow, these tags can populate details from the event that triggered the flow (like the items in someone’s order, or a shipment tracking number). Variables are surrounded by a pair of curly brackets, and a full tag looks like this: {{ person.email }}.

Additional resources