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

A push welcome flow should start with activity in your app, rather than an email list subscription or SMS opt-in. For a metric-triggered flow, have your development team send an event, such as an app signup or launch, to Klaviyo using Klaviyo’s APIs. Alternatively, you can trigger the flow when someone joins a segment of profiles who can receive mobile push marketing.

Before you can send push notifications, note that:

• Set up iOS push notifications in your Klaviyo account, or set up Android push notifications if you have an Android app. Your development team must also integrate the Klaviyo mobile SDK into your app for notifications to reach devices.
• 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 push welcome series triggered by your app’s custom metric or by a segment of profiles who can receive mobile push marketing:

1. Using the main Klaviyo navigation, go to the Flows tab.
2. 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.
3. Click the trigger of the flow.
   

4. To prevent repeat welcomes, select No re-entry under Re-entry criteria in the trigger settings. Alternatively, to use the profile filter shown below, click Add next to Profile filters.
5. If you chose a profile filter instead of No re-entry, select Has not been in this flow at any time, as shown below:

If you chose a metric trigger, add a Profile filters condition for If someone can or cannot receive marketing > Person can receive mobile push marketing before adding the push action. This keeps profiles without push consent from entering the welcome flow.

1. From the left sidebar, drag the push notification action into your flow.
   

2. Click the push notification action, then click Edit in its Content section. Enter a title and body, typically to thank the person for downloading your app. For example, you could use “Thanks for joining our app!” as the title.

3. Select the Behaviors tab.
   

4. Select what should happen when a recipient taps on the notification - open app, or deep link.
5. 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.
6. Optional: Toggle on Custom data and include key-value pairs along with your notification to trigger app behaviors.
7. When you are done, click Save & continue.
8. 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.
   

9. Optional: Add additional filters to the push notification.
10. 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.
11. Add and configure 2-3 push notifications, adding time delays between each message.
12. 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 uses a segment of profiles who can receive mobile push marketing. If you use a custom metric instead, check push eligibility before sending a notification: use the Profile filters condition described above, or add a conditional split before the first push notification to check whether the profile can receive mobile push marketing.

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 segment after the flow is set live. If you’d like to send to older segment members, learn how to add past profiles to a flow.

Additional resources