Understanding when and how to use custom conversion metrics

You will learn

Learn best practices for when to use and create custom metrics. By default, Klaviyo provides metrics that track your business’s performance and measure success (e.g., a Placed Order event). However, there may be instances where you need to create custom metrics to more accurately capture how your business runs. For example, your Placed Order events may include recurring subscriptions, and you’d like to review only one-time orders. This article walks you through common use cases for creating different types of custom metrics.

For information on setting up custom metrics, visit our guide on configuring custom metrics.

Please note that this guide walks through the most common use cases, but does not reflect all the potential possibilities of custom-created metrics.

Before you begin

Depending on your subscription provider, e-commerce integration, or e-commerce platform implementation, your custom metric creation may differ slightly.

For customers using Klaviyo’s marketing application, you have access to create 1 custom metric. For customers also using Advanced KDP or Personalization, you have increased flexibility to create up to 50 custom metrics. To learn more about these plans, head to our billing guide.

A custom metric creates a new reporting option without changing the original metrics or events. It can combine up to 5 metrics, with up to 3 filters per metric. All filters on a metric must match for an event to be included.

Reports that can use custom metrics

When you adjust a custom metric, reporting that uses it updates. Edits to a custom metric used in CLV, RFM, or product analysis may take up to 24 hours to appear. You can use custom metrics in the following reports:

• 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 within Catalog insights (Advanced KDP and Personalization customers only)

The audience performance dashboard does not offer custom metrics in its conversion metric dropdown.

Removing or excluding certain events

There may be instances where you want to separate out certain events from your default metrics to analyze performance more accurately, especially if you are on an integration that automatically combines different customer events—like recurring and one-time purchases, or in-store and online purchases. This way, you more accurately analyze what marketing strategies are contributing to your revenue.

The sections below walk through these in more detail, depending on your integration and needs.

Removing recurring subscription events

Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce can include subscription orders in Placed Order when your subscription provider creates orders in that platform. To exclude recurring orders, choose a property and value that identify them in your event data. For example, if the text property Source Name is subscription for these orders, set Relationship to does not equal and Value to subscription. Use the actual value sent by your provider, which may differ from this example.

Separating retail and ecommerce events (Shopify or other custom integrations)

With Shopify and some custom integrations, physical retail (POS) and ecommerce orders come through under the same metric (e.g., Shopify Placed Order).

To exclude Shopify point-of-sale orders, filter Source Name with Relationship set to does not equal and Value set to pos. This excludes POS orders from the custom metric while leaving the original Placed Order metric unchanged. For a custom integration, use the property and value that identify its retail orders.

Separating certain brands or types of products purchased

If your business has certain sub-brands or product types within your catalog, you may find that you want to see the data of some types vs. others. For example, if your company sells third-party products besides your own, you may want to see how revenue compares between your products and these third-party ones.

You can exclude orders containing third-party products by filtering a product or brand property included in your Placed Order events. For a list property, use doesn't contain with the value you want to exclude. This removes the entire matching order, including any of your own products in that order. It does not subtract only the third-party products’ revenue. To compare revenue from individual products in mixed orders, use a product-level purchase metric, such as Ordered Product, with the relevant product properties.

Capturing or combining events

You may run a business that has many types of revenue or customer events, outside of the default Klaviyo events.

For example, you may have a business that includes:

• A subscription model (and you are not on an integration that automatically adds these to your Placed Order events)
• Paid virtual classes
• Lead generation or sign-ups in person
• In-person point of sale/physical retail locations (where the data is held in different systems or integrations).

The sections below explain how to combine revenue sources that are already recorded in Klaviyo. Before combining metrics, check that they do not count the same purchase twice. For example, adding a subscription purchase metric to Placed Order will overstate revenue if both already record that subscription purchase.

1. Navigate to Analytics > Metrics and click Create custom metric. Enter a Name that describes the sources you are combining.
2. Choose Value under Aggregated by for revenue, or Count for non-revenue events such as lead generation or sign-ups. In Define, select your first source under Metric name. If you chose Value, select its numeric Metric value property.
3. Click Add metric to include another source. Select its metric and, for revenue reporting, its value property. Add filters only where you need to narrow the events included from that source.
4. Click Preview metric to check the results, then Create metric to save.
5. Select the saved custom metric in a supported report to view the combined results. It appears as a new reporting option and does not replace the original Placed Order metric.

Adding in subscriptions

For Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce

With standard Shopify integrations (not including headless implementations), BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, subscription orders can already be included in Placed Order when the subscription provider creates orders in the ecommerce platform. Check your existing events before adding a separate subscription purchase metric, so you do not count the same purchase twice. To exclude recurring orders, use the guidance above on removing subscription events.

For subscriptions tracked in a separate metric

Use Add metric to combine the metric recording subscription purchases with your ecommerce Placed Order metric. A Source Name filter only selects matching events within the metric it is applied to; it does not add purchases from another metric. If Source Name is a text property, choose is equal to with your actual subscription source value. The contains relationship is available for list properties.

Adding in other non-subscription revenue events

For any integration

If your business earns revenue from live events, classes, webinars, or other sources, you can combine the metrics that record those purchases with Placed Order in a custom metric.

Use Add metric to include the metric that records class purchases, following the steps above. If those purchases already arrive within Placed Order, use the existing metric without adding a second copy. A Source Name filter for live classes selects only those matching events; it does not also include unrelated website orders. For a text property, use is equal to with the actual source value; use contains only for a list property.

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