SMS Overview, Klaviyo

SMS Overview for the selected period. The headline summary of your Klaviyo SMS programme: sends, clicks, conversions, attributed revenue, and opt-in growth at a glance. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it.

Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Email Marketing

Your whole SMS programme on one card: how many messages went out, how many were clicked, what converted, and how the consent list grew. SMS has no opens, so clicks and conversions carry the engagement story.

At a glance

A single-card summary of the Klaviyo SMS channel across the selected period, pulling together sends, clicks, conversions, attributed revenue, and opt-in growth so you can read the health of the programme without opening five cards. SMS is fundamentally different from email in three ways that shape every number here: there is no open tracking on SMS, so clicks are the primary engagement signal; every recipient must have given explicit consent, so the list grows through opt-ins rather than imports; and each message carries a real carrier cost, so volume equals spend and ROI framing matters more than it does on email. Because SMS revenue-per-recipient is typically much higher than email but each send costs money, the right question for this card is not “how many did we send” but “did the revenue clear the messaging cost”. Treat this as the cockpit view and drill into the component cards when a number looks off.

What it counts	A roll-up of the core SMS statistics for the period: sends, clicks, placed-order conversions, attributed revenue, and net new opt-ins (consent).
API endpoint + statistics field	POST /api/campaign-values-reports and POST /api/flow-values-reports scoped to the SMS channel, returning recipients, clicks, conversions, and revenue; opt-in counts come from consent metrics via GET /api/metric-aggregates.
Attribution model	Klaviyo default placed-order attribution: 5-day click plus 1-day view, single-touch (last-touch).
Email vs SMS aggregation	SMS channel only. Email sends, clicks, and revenue are tracked separately and never blended into this card.
MPP impact	None. Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates email opens only; SMS has no opens to inflate, which is one reason clicks are a cleaner SMS signal.
Chart type	KPI summary.
Time window	30D vsP
Alert trigger	A meaningful swing in SMS send volume, click engagement, or conversion against the recent baseline, which usually points to a cadence change, a deliverability issue, or a consent-list problem.
Roles	owner, marketing

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Klaviyo data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

An illustrative homeware brand running a small but growing Klaviyo SMS programme alongside email. Reading the dashboard on 14 Apr 26 for the trailing 30 days (14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26), the SMS overview looks like this (illustrative figures):

Metric	This period	Prior period
SMS sends	18,400	15,900
SMS clicks	1,288	1,033
SMS conversions	552	430
SMS attributed revenue	£41,400	£31,800
Net new opt-ins	1,120	860

Click rate (illustrative) = 1,288 ÷ 18,400 = ~7.0%
Conversion rate = 552 ÷ 18,400 = ~3.0%
Revenue per send = £41,400 ÷ 18,400 = ~£2.25 per message

Five observations:

1. Every headline number rose period on period, and opt-ins led the way. Net new opt-ins grew from 860 to 1,120, which is the engine: a larger consented list means more reachable recipients next period, so growth here feeds every other line on the card.
2. Clicks are doing the work that opens do on email. With no open tracking on SMS, the ~7.0% click rate is the cleanest engagement read available. A healthy click line with rising conversions says the messages are landing with the right audience.
3. Revenue per send of roughly £2.25 is the number that justifies the channel. Because each SMS carries a carrier cost, the comparison that matters is revenue per send against your per-message cost. SMS revenue-per-recipient typically runs well above email, which is what makes a paid channel worthwhile.
4. A rising send line is only good while conversion holds. If sends climbed but conversion per send fell, you would be paying for volume that is not converting. This card surfaces that tension; the SMS Conversion card confirms it.
5. The consent gate caps your reach. You cannot simply send to more people the way you might on an imported email list. Growth runs through opt-ins, so when sends plateau, the fix is usually upstream in SMS Opt-in Trend, not a louder broadcast.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

SMS Overview is the cockpit view. Drill into these component cards when a headline moves:

Card	Why pair it with SMS Overview
SMS Sends	The volume line, which is also your spend line on a cost-per-message channel. Start here when the overview revenue moves.
SMS Clicks	The primary engagement signal, since SMS has no opens. A falling click line explains a falling conversion line.
SMS Conversion	The placed-order conversion rate. This is what turns sends into the revenue shown on the overview.
SMS Opt-in Trend	The growth engine. Consent gates reach, so opt-in momentum determines how far the programme can scale.
SMS vs Email Sends	The channel-mix view. Use it to balance SMS reach against email reach in your overall sending plan.
Revenue per Recipient	The value benchmark. Compare SMS revenue per recipient against email to confirm the channel earns its cost.

Reconciling against Klaviyo

Where to look in Klaviyo:

• Klaviyo → Analytics → Performance, with the channel filter set to SMS, for the blended SMS programme view.
• Klaviyo → Campaigns and Klaviyo → Flows, filtered to SMS messages, for per-message sends, clicks, conversions, and revenue.
• Klaviyo → Audience, then the SMS consent view, for opt-in and consent counts behind the growth number.

Why our number may legitimately differ:

Reason	Direction of divergence
Time zone. Vortex IQ buckets the period by UTC day; Klaviyo uses your account time zone. Messages near midnight can fall into a different period.	Either direction, usually marginal.
Carrier filtering. Some messages are filtered or held at the carrier level and may be counted differently between a live Klaviyo view and our snapshot.	Ours can read marginally low.
Attribution window. Conversions and revenue follow Klaviyo’s 5-day click, 1-day view default. A changed window shifts revenue mechanically.	Drift on changed-window accounts.
Currency base. Revenue is shown in your store’s base currency; a multi-currency view in Klaviyo may convert differently.	Either direction.
Page caps. Values reporting pages at 50 records per pull, so very high message counts in a window can see slight aggregation truncation.	Ours can read marginally low for heavy senders.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is there no open rate for SMS? Because SMS has no open tracking. Unlike email, there is no pixel or equivalent that reliably signals a message was read, so Klaviyo does not report SMS opens. That is why this card leans on clicks and conversions as the engagement signals, not opens.

Why can’t I just send to more people to grow revenue? Because SMS is consent-based. Every recipient must have explicitly opted in under rules like TCPA and GDPR, so you cannot import a list and blast it the way some teams treat email. Reach grows through opt-ins, which is why the opt-in trend is part of this overview.

SMS volume is low compared with my email, is that a problem? Not necessarily. SMS is a higher-intent, higher-cost channel. Lower volume with much higher revenue per recipient is the normal shape. Judge SMS on revenue per send against its messaging cost, not on raw volume against email.

How should I think about SMS ROI? Every message costs money to send, so the channel only pays when revenue per send clears your per-message cost plus the value of the relationship. Watch sends (spend) and revenue together rather than either alone.

Does Apple Mail Privacy Protection affect these numbers? No. MPP inflates email opens only. SMS has no opens to inflate, which actually makes the SMS engagement picture cleaner than the email equivalent.

Why does my latest period look slightly weak? Attribution lag. Conversions and revenue attribute over a window of up to five days from the click, so the most recent days can fill in after the snapshot. Give the newest part of the period a few days before judging it.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

SMS Overview is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Klaviyo and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English.

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