Understanding silent push notifications

You will learn

Learn what silent push notifications are and how to use them in your campaigns and flows, along with specific use cases.

What are silent push notifications?

Silent push notifications are push notifications that are invisibly sent to a device. They have no content or sound and are not displayed to the user. With silent push, you can trigger content updates or tasks without notifying the user or requiring them to update your app. Common use cases include:

• Displaying new content in your app
• Personalizing the app interface
• Downloading information from a server

To trigger app tasks via silent push, utilize key-value pairs. Key-value pairs are custom data that can be included with push notifications, both silent and standard.

How to use silent push notifications

First, make sure you’ve set up push notifications for iOS or Android in your Klaviyo account.

In order to use key-value pairs, your app must be set up to recognize keys and respond to their values, so be sure to work with your app developer to ensure your app is built to support your use cases.

Silent push notifications, like standard push notifications, can be used in both campaigns and flows:

• Learn how to send a push notification campaign
• Learn how to add a push notification to a flow

Key-value pairs enable many use cases for silent push notifications but are not required.

1. In the push notification editor, select the Content tab. Under Type, select Silent.
2. Select the Behaviors tab. To include key-value pairs, use Custom data to enter the keys and values your app recognizes. You can add up to 10 key-value pairs per notification.

3. Save your message. For a campaign, click Next or Save and return, depending on the campaign builder. For a flow, click Save & continue.

For a campaign, finish reviewing the campaign and send or schedule it. For a flow, set the push notification to Live when you are ready to send.

Example use cases

The benefit of silent push notifications (along with key-value pairs) is that you can use them in a variety of use cases.

You can send a silent push notification to personalize app content based on the recipient’s attributes, such as profile properties stored in Klaviyo. For example, if you have an ecommerce app, you could use silent push and key-value pairs to display a customer’s updated rewards points in their app after they’ve made a purchase.

iOS-specific guidance

If you are having issues with silent push notifications being delivered, note that iOS does not guarantee the delivery of silent push notifications. They may not deliver them based on the device's current state, like battery level and network connection.

Do silent push notifications affect Klaviyo performance reporting?

You are able to see the delivery rate and bounce rate for an individual silent push notification; however, silent push notifications are excluded from all aggregated performance reporting in Klaviyo. This includes things like mobile push open rates over time, since they do not have opens or conversions.

Please note that you will see different events for silent push than for standard push, namely Received Silent Push and Bounced Silent Push.

A Received Silent Push event means Klaviyo successfully sent the notification to Apple’s or Google’s push notification service. It does not confirm that the device received it or that your app completed the background task.

Additional resources