Quiet hours in campaigns
Before you begin, make sure SMS is enabled on your account, your campaign includes SMS or MMS content, and you're familiar with your account's SMS quiet-hours settings. For general quiet-hours concepts, see Understanding SMS and MMS quiet hours in flows.
What is quiet hours in campaigns?
Some regions legally restrict the hours in the day during which you can send text messages, and sending during these windows can expose you to litigation. Quiet hours in campaigns automatically prevents your text message campaigns from sending to recipients during their quiet hours, and lets you choose whether an affected message should be delayed until quiet hours end or skipped entirely.
Klaviyo checks each recipient against quiet hours based on the send time of the individual message. Because of this, recipients in different locations can receive the same campaign at different times. Someone outside quiet hours gets the message right away, while someone inside quiet hours has it delayed or skipped based on the option you chose.
How to use quiet hours in campaigns
When you create a text message campaign, build your message and choose your audience as usual, then continue to the scheduling step.
Choose Delay when… | Choose Skip when… |
|---|---|
The message stays useful after quiet hours end. | The message would be stale after a long delay. |
A short compliance-related delay is acceptable. | The campaign is tied to a limited-time promotion or event, such as a flash sale, an expiring offer, or an event reminder. |
You want to reach affected recipients later. | You'd rather not send to recipients who can't receive the message promptly. |
After you have scheduled or sent the campaign, Klaviyo evaluates quiet hours individually for each recipient at send time. Messages outside quiet hours go out normally, and messages that fall inside quiet hours are delayed or skipped according to the setting you selected for the campaign.
Quiet hours evaluates each recipient based on the location and time zone stored on their Klaviyo profile. See Understanding when and how Klaviyo sets a profile's location for how profile location is generally set.
How delays and skips work
Delay holds a message until the recipient exits quiet hours, then sends the message. You can also set a maximum delay threshold so that, if the next allowed send time falls beyond that threshold, the message is skipped instead of delayed indefinitely. Campaign status is shown as Sent as long as partial messages are delivered, even if some messages are delayed due to quiet hours. For recipients whose messages were delayed, the Received Text Message event in their activity log includes a field labeled Quiet Hours Delay Duration.
For example, if quiet hours run from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. and a campaign sends at 10:30 p.m., a recipient in New York is in quiet hours, so their message waits 9.5 hours and sends at 8 a.m. If your maximum delay is shorter than that 9.5-hour wait, the message is skipped instead.
Skip should be used for time-sensitive campaigns, like flash sales, expiring offers, or event reminders, where a delayed message would arrive too late to be useful. You can see skipped messages for a campaign by going to Campaign Overview > Recipient Activity > Skipped. Recipients that were skipped due to quiet hours are marked as Skipped: Quiet Hours. A skip event is also posted to the activity log of each skipped recipient.
Best practices
- Choose Delay for evergreen or non-time-sensitive content, and choose Skip when a late delivery would reduce the message's relevance.
- Review your account's quiet-hours settings before launching a campaign.
- Give delayed messages time to complete before evaluating campaign performance.
- Use reporting to see how many recipients were delayed or skipped.
- Consult qualified legal counsel for questions about SMS sending requirements.