Getting Started with Klaviyo: The Complete Setup Guide

Nailing the Account Settings and Foundation

When you first open a Klaviyo account, the default settings will not match your business out of the box. Skipping straight to sending campaigns without fixing the basics is how brands ruin their reporting and their deliverability before they even get going.

For more detail, see Important Klaviyo Metrics to Review for Campaign Deliverability.

Start by heading straight into your organisation settings. Update your store address, set your local time zone, and choose your account currency. If you are based in New Zealand or Australia and leave the currency as US dollars, your revenue reporting will be completely skewed (costing you roughly $1,500 in mismatched tracking for every $2,000 recorded). That is a mistake.

Make sure you also select your exact industry under the organisation profile. Klaviyo uses this data to benchmark your open rates, click rates, and revenue per recipient against direct competitors in your niche. If you are an agency or have multiple staff logging in, turn on two-factor authentication immediately. Client security is not something you want to gamble on.

Configuring Attribution, Smart Sending, and Domains

Before you send a single message, you need to understand how Klaviyo attributes revenue and manages sending volume. These settings sit under your account preferences and dictate how your data is calculated.

Smart Sending and Attribution Windows

• Smart Sending: Klaviyo defaults to a 16-hour window. If a customer receives an automated flow email, Smart Sending prevents them from receiving a marketing campaign 2 hours later. Keep this turned on so you do not bombard your list.
• Attribution Window: Klaviyo attributes a sale to an email if the customer clicks or opens within a 5-day window. Keep a close eye on this setting. Some agencies will quietly expand this window from 5 days to 10 days to make it look like they doubled your revenue overnight without driving any actual growth.
• Anonymous Visitor Tracking: Turn this on under your data preferences. It allows Klaviyo to track on-site behaviour anonymously and retroactively tie that browsing history to a customer profile once they finally submit a sign-up form.

Dedicated Sending Domain vs Shared Domain

If you are a brand new store with no sending reputation, start on Klaviyo's shared sending domain. Your sender reputation is what inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook use to decide whether your emails hit the primary inbox or the spam folder. Building initial engagement on a shared domain protects you while you warm up your list. Once you have a consistent track record of engaged recipients opening your emails, you can safely migrate to a dedicated sending domain.

For more detail, see How to Warm Up a New Klaviyo Account and Hit Primary.

The Core Automations Every Store Needs

You do not need thirty complicated automations on day one. You need four foundational flows built properly with strict conditional logic.

1. Welcome Series

Trigger this flow when someone joins your main newsletter list. Deliver any promised discount in the very first email. Never put the coupon code directly on the website popup success screen. Delivering it via email trains the subscriber to open your messages and signals positive engagement to inbox providers right away.

2. Abandoned Checkout

Trigger this flow off Checkout Started with a flow filter of Placed Order zero times since starting this flow. Split test your initial time delay between 30 minutes and 45 minutes. For subscribers who have never bought before, remind them of their welcome discount after 24 hours. If they have already purchased in the past, send a simple reminder without discounting your margins.

3. Browse Abandonment

Trigger this when someone views a product on your site. Filter out anyone who has started a checkout, placed an order, or been in the flow within the last 14 days. People view multiple products every week, so capping their entry prevents list burnout and keeps your unsubscribe rate down.

4. Post-Purchase and Fulfilled Order

I like to split post-purchase into two distinct experiences. First, send a plain-text thank you email roughly 1 hour after their first order. Format it to look like a personal note from the founder with no heavy design blocks. Second, set up a fulfilled order flow that triggers when the package actually ships. Use this flow to cross-sell complementary products or remind them to reorder perishable goods (such as a 21-day delay for consumables).

Managing Your List and the 90-Day Engaged Segment

Klaviyo is free up to 250 active profiles, after which you pay based on the volume of active profiles in your account. You should never pay for unengaged dead weight on your list.

If you have 3,000 total subscribers but only 1,000 of them are actually opening your emails, you only need to be paying for a 1,000-profile plan ($45 per month instead of $70 per month). To do this, suppress unengaged contacts and send all regular marketing campaigns strictly to an engaged segment.

Build your primary engaged segment with this logic:

• Someone is in your main newsletter list; AND
• Has opened an email at least once in the last 90 days; OR
• Has clicked an email at least once in the last 90 days; OR
• Was added to the newsletter list in the last 45 days.

Aim for a healthy 50/50 balance across your regular campaigns between pure educational value and direct sales promotions. Sending purely transactional sales pitches every three days burns your list fast.

Building Dedicated Sign-Up Forms for Mobile and Desktop

Do not create a single sign-up form and display it across all screen sizes. Mobile visitors behave completely differently from desktop visitors, and your data should reflect that.

Create one popup form set strictly to Show on desktop, and clone it to create a second form set strictly to Show on mobile. This separation allows you to run independent A/B tests on display timing (such as testing a 5-second delay against a 10-second delay) and tweak layout styles without breaking mobile responsiveness. Always check the setting to hide the form from existing Klaviyo profiles so current subscribers are never annoyed by popups.

Final Thoughts

Getting started with Klaviyo comes down to getting the unsexy fundamentals right before you scale. Configure your tracking settings properly, launch the four core automations, and restrict your campaigns to engaged subscribers. Build these systems correctly at the start and your email channel will generate reliable revenue for years to come.

For more detail, see Why Your Emails Aren't Getting Opened (And How to Fix It).

Get Your Account Configured Correctly

If you want our team to audit your settings, build high-converting flows, and handle your technical integration from scratch, explore our Klaviyo account setup service.