How to configure custom conversion metrics

You will learn

Learn how to create custom metrics to more accurately track the impact of your marketing and how customers drive conversions. By default Klaviyo provides many metrics (e.g., Placed Order) to track your business’s success. However, if you have a custom setup or a different business use case, these default metrics may not work for you. For example, your Placed Orders events include recurring subscriptions, and you’d like to review only orders placed through your ecommerce website. The guide below walks you through how to set up these custom metrics for your needs.

If you need help on deciding when you should use custom metrics, head to our strategic guide on using custom metrics.

Before you begin

It’s important to note when you create your own custom metrics (e.g., Placed Order that excludes subscriptions), they will appear as a new metric option in Klaviyo reporting (i.e., it will not replace the default Placed Order metric).

Mapped metrics

You also have the option to utilize custom metrics within your mapped metrics. This helps ensure your generated predictive models and default reports are aligned to your account’s data structure and needs. For example, you may create a custom Placed Order metric that is then used to calculate applicable reporting using this metric.

Reports that can use custom metrics

And any time you adjust a custom metric, applicable reporting will update. Reporting where you can use this custom metric includes:

• The home dashboard (main dashboard that greets you when logging in)
• Business review dashboards (within the dashboards section)
• Overview or analytics dashboards (within the dashboards section)
• Flow performance reports (within custom reports)
• Campaign performance reports (within custom reports)
• Single and multi-metric reports (within custom reports)
• Within flow analytics (in the flows list page itself)
• Within campaign conversions (in the campaigns list page itself)
• The conversion overview dashboard (Advanced KDP and Personalization customers only)
• The customer lifetime value (CLV) dashboard (Advanced KDP and Personalization customers only)
• The recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) analysis report (Advanced KDP and Personalization customers only)
• The product analysis dashboard (Advanced KDP and Personalization customers only)

Using tags

Also, tags from your ecommerce integration, as well as other integrations, may not always reliably ingest correctly into Klaviyo. It is advised to avoid using tags in your custom metrics and events setup.

Default custom metrics

For Personalization and Advanced KDP customers, Klaviyo can automatically create default custom metrics when the required integration events are available. Newly created defaults appear in the Metrics tab. If you do not use either product, head to the next section on creating your metrics.

The following ecommerce and partner integration combinations support default custom metrics:

Newly created subscription defaults include the integration names. Existing defaults may have older names.

Creating a new custom metric

1. Navigate to Analytics > Metrics.
2. In the upper right, click Create custom metric. Next, you will see the page to set up your new custom metric.
3. Under Details, create and enter the name of your new metric. Use a name that will help you easily identify what this metric captures (e.g., “Orders placed w/ subscriptions”).
   

4. Click the Aggregated by dropdown and choose how you want to calculate your metric (either by Value or Count). For example, if you want to capture revenue from Placed Order events, use Value to show the revenue output. If you want to redefine email clicks, use Count.
   

5. In the Define section, click the Metric name dropdown and select the source metric to include. These include Klaviyo and integration-specific events and metrics.

6. If you selected Value under Aggregated by, choose the numeric property to total in the Metric value property dropdown, such as the order value for Placed Order events. This field is not shown when you select Count. Use filters in the following steps to include or exclude subscription orders.

7. If applicable, click Add filter to further define your filters and metric definition.
   

1. If you added a filter, choose the event property to filter in the Property field, such as Source Name.
   
   Once you have chosen your property, the Type field will automatically determine how it will be represented (e.g., number, text, etc.).

2. Click the Relationship dropdown and choose how to compare the property’s value. For example, to exclude events whose Source Name is “non-paid marketing subscription,” select does not equal.

3. If your selected relationship requires a value, select or enter it in the Value field. For the example above, enter “non-paid marketing subscription.”
4. Optional: Click Add metric in the Define section to combine another source metric. Repeat the metric selection and filter steps for each source. You can combine up to 5 metrics, with up to 3 filters per metric.

1. Optional: Click Preview metric to check that your metric captures what you need. The preview shows a bar chart for the last 30 days on the left and an Activity log with up to 10 recent matching conversion events on the right.
2. When you are ready to save your new metric, click Create metric.
3. Return to Analytics > Metrics to find your new metric.

Editing a previously created custom metric definition

1. If you have previously created a custom metric definition and need to update it, head to Analytics > Metrics.
2. From the list find the metric you want to edit and click on it.
3. Click Edit definition in the upper right. You will return to the setup page from here, where you can adjust your definition, including filters, relationships, and values. Follow the instructions above to adjust these as needed.
4. Click Update metric to save your changes. You will return to the metric’s page.

Deleting a previously created custom metric definition

If the custom metric is used in mapped metrics, change its mapping to another metric before deleting it.

1. Head to Analytics > Metrics.
2. In the list, find the metric you want to delete and click the 3 dot menu to the right and select Delete.
   

3. Click Delete in the confirmation dialog. Check that the metric no longer appears in Analytics > Metrics.

Additional resources