Klaviyo Email & SMS Product Updates: October 2021

Today, Klaviyo announced a huge list of updates to their platform. This blog lists out all of the new features and functions that email marketers and SMS marketers can take advantage of straight away.

• Integrations have doubled
• Huge overhaul of the email editor (drag and drop)
• New background images block
• Product block order selector
• An undo button added to the editor
• New preview functionality
• Universal content
• New forms library
• Quiet hours comes to SMS
• Automated reports
• Showcase

All of these features were announced in the Klaviyo public product update on October 27, 2021.

Let's explore them...

Integrations

There were already 100 direction integrations available in Klaviyo. Today there are now over 200, with over 25 more coming to the platform in the coming months. This brings some of the most popular plugins that email marketers are used to seeing in other email platforms, now available directly in Klaviyo. So for many of you, this will mean less Zapier zaps or custom integrations to get your favourite marketing tools working with Klaviyo.

The email editor gets multiple upgrades

This is the biggest update today, by far. There are lots of new features and upgrades are available in the new email editor. For most email marketers, this is a game-changer. 

Sections block

One of the challenges with the Klaviyo email editor is that you can't group lots of content into one single section block - really frustrating, until today. Now you can create sections, using the sections block, bringing lots of types of content into one block. You can also save these groups as favourites and bring them into other email campaigns without having to build them from scratch. Super handy.

New background image block

Sounds simple - and it is. But if you historically wanted to bring a background image into a content block, you'd need to get your HTML hat on and jump into the source code. Not anymore - from today, you can just select the new section block, apply a background image and you're all set.

Product blocks: changing the order

Before, if you wanted to change the order of products in an email, it was a bit of an unwelcome adventure to get it done. Now, you can just drag the products into the order you want them in through the content tool and they appear exactly as you want them to. Great for those last-minute changes that come up.

An undo button

That's right - Klaviyo didn't have an undo button before. This was soooo frustrating. But now undo and redo are here to help email marketers when those little slip-ups that happen. Small change, but hugely welcome!

Autosave

Another super simple one, but so important - autosave. How many times have you closed a template or campaign and forgotten to save it, because you thought it would do that automatically?

We've all tripped on this one in the past. Thankfully, this new feature means that'll never happen again. Awesome. 

New email preview functionality

Last but not least on the editor updates, you can now preview emails way more easily. With a whole new preview window (instead of the previous modal window), this is a pretty big upgrade - especially for those utilising a lot of custom fields and dynamic content. 

When is the new email editor available?

You can get access right now, but if you're not quite ready, you can opt to stick with the old one for now if you want (it took us a couple of hours to get used to using the new editor).

When you next log in to Klaviyo and open a campaign or template, you will see this screen:

All you need to do is select the new editor, and you're ready to start creating emails the new way!

Universal content is here

Now you can change one content block such as a sale banner in one place. This change will be deployed in every email where this content block appears. Neat, huh? 

So now, you can edit 100s of emails in one single place - universal content. This is great for updating flows (Klaviyo's automation tool), to update content such as headers, navigation bars, offer banners, discount codes and more. This is going to be utilised by absolutely everyone, I'm sure.

New forms library

Forms are pretty dull to create from scratch. But in the past, there haven't been that many options to get started within Klaviyo. Today, there's a new forms library in the app, giving users tons of ideas to get forms right.

SMS gets an upgrade with Quiet Hours

Quiet hours is a new feature that you can apply to SMS messages in flows. This stops you from accidentally pestering your customers at unsociable times of the night - your message will automatically queue for when you've set quiet hours to end.

Also, you can select a specific SMS where you want to apply the quiet hours setting - it doesn't have to be to a whole flow. And you can turn off quiet hours for individual messages in a flow, for those important messages such as if your shipment has been delivered and is outside your customer's home. Really handy.

Automated reports

It's what it says it is - reports, but now they can be delivered to your inbox at a cadence of your choice. This will help marketers to stay on top of flow performance especially - because we all know how easy it is to forget to check in on those. Not anymore... 

Showcase

Need a little inspiration for that next important campaign? Klaviyo automatically pulls together the best performing email campaigns into one inspirational library that enables you to see the creative, time of broadcast, subject line, results and more. That's Showcase!

Summary

Klaviyo's product update today is a massive upgrade to their platform. The drag and drop email editor has been in need of an upgrade for some time now. It's finally here - this will make campaign and flow creation faster, it will improve the experience that subscribers have with your brand in the inbox. And we hope that it will help you to create really high performing campaigns that stick.