SMS Sends, Klaviyo

SMS Sends for the selected period. The count of SMS messages sent across the window. Because SMS is cost-per-message, this volume line doubles as your spend line. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it.

Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Email Marketing

The count of SMS messages sent in the period. On a cost-per-message channel, volume is spend, so this line is as much a budget signal as a marketing one.

At a glance

The total number of SMS messages sent across the selected period, counting both campaign broadcasts and triggered flow messages on the SMS channel. This is the simplest SMS metric and one of the most consequential, because SMS is billed per message: every send on this line cost money to deliver. Unlike email, where an extra send is effectively free, growing this number directly grows your messaging bill, so the volume line and the spend line are the same line. Reach is also gated by consent, so you can only send to contacts who explicitly opted in, which means this number is capped by your opted-in audience rather than by how aggressively you choose to send. Read it next to clicks, conversions, and revenue so volume is always judged against what it returned.

What it counts	The sum of SMS messages sent in the period, across SMS campaigns and SMS flows, counted as recipients on the SMS channel.
API endpoint + statistics field	POST /api/campaign-values-reports and POST /api/flow-values-reports scoped to the SMS channel, returning the recipients statistic per message, aggregated for the window.
Email vs SMS aggregation	SMS channel only. Email sends are tracked separately under Total Sends and never blended here.
MPP impact	None. Apple Mail Privacy Protection affects email opens only; it has no bearing on SMS send counts.
Chart type	KPI summary.
Time window	30D vsP
Alert trigger	A sharp change in SMS send volume, which on a paid channel signals either a planned push (watch the spend) or an unplanned spike (investigate the cause).
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 fashion brand that normally runs one SMS campaign a week plus a steady abandoned-cart SMS flow, then ran a flash-sale push. Reading the dashboard on 14 Apr 26 for the trailing 30 days (14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26), the SMS sends by week look like this (illustrative figures):

Week	SMS campaigns	SMS sends	Approx. message cost	Attributed revenue
14-20 Mar 26	1	6,200	~£93	£14,200
21-27 Mar 26	1	6,400	~£96	£14,600
28 Mar-3 Apr 26	2	12,800	~£192	£21,300
4-12 Apr 26	3	19,100	~£287	£24,800

Week 1 sends = 6,200
Week 4 sends = 19,100, roughly 3x the week 1 volume
Cost scales with sends; revenue per send fell from ~£2.29 (week 1) to ~£1.30 (week 4)

Five observations:

1. Send volume tripled across the month as the brand stacked extra campaigns. This is exactly the kind of cadence change the card exists to surface, and on SMS the consequence is immediate: messaging cost tripled alongside it.
2. Cost tracks volume one for one. Because SMS is billed per message, every extra send is real spend. The approximate cost column moves in lockstep with the send column, which is why this line doubles as a budget signal.
3. Revenue grew, but revenue per send fell. Week 1 returned roughly £2.29 per message; week 4 returned roughly £1.30. More volume earned more in absolute terms while earning less per message, the classic diminishing return of pushing harder into the same consented list.
4. The consent cap is the ceiling. You cannot keep tripling sends indefinitely, because you can only message contacts who opted in. Sustainable growth comes from SMS Opt-in Trend, not from sending the same list more often.
5. Judge the push on net contribution, not gross revenue. Week 4 looks good on revenue alone, but the right read subtracts message cost and weighs the falling per-send return. Pair this card with SMS Conversion to see whether extra volume is still converting.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

SMS Sends is a volume and spend signal. Pair it with these:

Card	Why pair it with SMS Sends
SMS Overview	The cockpit view. Sends is one line of the overview; start there for the whole-programme picture.
SMS vs Email Sends	The channel-mix view. See SMS volume against email volume to balance reach across a paid and a near-free channel.
SMS Clicks	The engagement return on volume. Rising sends with flat clicks means you are paying to reach people who are not responding.
Total Sends	The email send counterpart. Together they show your full sending footprint across both channels.
SMS Conversion	The payoff per send. Volume is only justified while conversion per message holds up.

Reconciling against Klaviyo

Where to look in Klaviyo:

• Klaviyo → Campaigns, filtered to SMS, where the sent count per SMS campaign is shown.
• Klaviyo → Flows, filtered to SMS messages, for triggered SMS send volume per flow.
• Klaviyo → Analytics → Performance, with the channel set to SMS, for the blended SMS send trend.

Why our number may legitimately differ:

Reason	Direction of divergence
Time zone. Vortex IQ buckets sends by UTC day; Klaviyo uses your account time zone. A message sent near midnight can fall into a different period.	Either direction, usually marginal.
Carrier filtering. Some messages are filtered or held at the carrier and may be counted differently between a live Klaviyo view and our snapshot.	Ours can read marginally low.
Campaign plus flow scope. This card blends SMS campaigns and flows. A campaign-only Klaviyo view will read lower than ours.	Ours reads higher than a campaign-only view.
Page caps. Values reporting pages at 50 records per pull, so very high SMS message counts in a window can see slight aggregation truncation.	Ours can read marginally low for heavy senders.
Period boundaries. Vortex IQ uses a 30-day rolling window vs prior; Klaviyo dashboards often default to calendar months.	Either direction.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Does this count campaigns and flows? Yes. The card blends SMS campaign broadcasts and triggered SMS flow messages, so it reflects your total SMS sending footprint. If you compare against a campaign-only Klaviyo view, ours will read higher by the flow volume.

Why does my send volume matter so much more than on email? Because SMS is billed per message. On email an extra send is effectively free; on SMS it is real spend. That is why this volume line doubles as a budget line and why over-sending hurts the ledger directly, not just engagement.

Can I just send more to grow revenue? Only up to the size of your consented audience, and only while each extra send still converts. You can message opted-in contacts only, and pushing the same list harder usually lowers revenue per send. Sustainable growth comes from more opt-ins, not more sends to the same people.

Why is my SMS volume so much lower than my email volume? That is normal and expected. SMS reach is gated by explicit consent, and far fewer contacts opt in to texts than to email. Lower volume at higher cost and higher per-message return is the standard shape of a healthy SMS programme.

Does a send here mean the message was delivered? Not exactly. This counts messages sent to recipients. Some can be filtered or fail at the carrier, so a delivered-based view may read marginally lower. For engagement, look at clicks and conversions rather than sends.

Does Apple Mail Privacy Protection change this? No. MPP affects email opens only and has no effect on SMS send counts.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

SMS Sends 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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