How to create a multilingual push notification campaign using Smart Translations

Learn how to create and send a push notification campaign in multiple languages, depending on the language preferences of your audience. Klaviyo can translate a campaign’s content to 60+ languages.

Localizing campaigns is great if you have or plan to expand to an international customer base. Sending messages in each subscriber’s preferred language allows you to reach a wider audience which can increase overall engagement.

Smart Translations are also available for email campaigns, text message campaigns, and WhatsApp campaigns.

Before you begin

Smart Translations is available with a paid Klaviyo account. Enable Smart Translations from your account settings and choose the profile property Klaviyo should use to determine each recipient’s preferred language.

If you haven’t already, learn the basics of how to create and send a push notification campaign. This article mainly covers translation features for campaigns.

Translate a push notification campaign

Make sure your push notification is fully edited and ready to send in your original language before translating. Otherwise, you’ll have to go through the translation process again if you make edits to the original content.

1. Create a campaign or edit an existing draft campaign.
2. On the Recipients step of the campaign wizard, make sure to add lists or segments to your campaign’s audience that you know have multiple language preferences.
3. On the Message step, write the message you want to send to customers. Add an image if desired.
4. On the Message step, click Translate in the header.

5. Select the original language that the content was written in. This will default to your account language.
6. Select what languages you want to translate your campaign into by checking the box next to each language. Click the dropdown under Additional languages to view and select more languages.

7. Choose a Default language for recipients whose preferred language is unknown or has no matching translation. You can choose the original language or one of your selected translation languages.
8. Click Translate.
9. On the next step, review the translated push notification title and body. You can manually edit the text if needed. You can also click the edit button next to a listed image to change it to one appropriate for the selected language.
10. Click the edit button next to the message text to see the full message.
11. If you selected multiple languages to translate into, click the arrows at the top or use the dropdown to switch between languages.
12. To add a language, open the language dropdown and select it under Add new translation. To remove the current language, choose its remove option, select a New fallback language if prompted, and click Remove.
13. Once you’re done, click Done.
14. Click Next to open the Review step. Review your campaign, then click Schedule or send. Choose when to send it, then click Schedule message or Send now.

Editing original content after translating

If you edit the original content of the message after you’ve already translated, a warning will appear at the top of the editor notifying you that your edits will affect translation.

To correct any potential translation errors:

1. Click Review translations next to the warning message.
2. Click Update translations to update all out-of-sync elements highlighted in yellow for the selected language.
3. To handle changed text individually instead, open its 3-dot menu and choose from the following:
   • Re-translate - translates any changed text
   • Edit - manually modify the element
   • Ignore - keep element as is
4. To change an image for the selected language, click its pencil icon and select a replacement.
5. Repeat for each language marked Update needed, then click Done.

Translations for cloned messages

If you clone a campaign with translations, the new campaign will keep all translations from the original which you can freely edit. Learn how to clone a campaign.

Additional resources