UTM tracking in Klaviyo: campaign and flow tagging that survives a real ESP migration

Klaviyo's UTM tracking lives in three places: the account level, the campaign level, and the flow level. Each has its own settings, and the defaults capitalize utm_source in a way that conflicts with the lowercase convention every clean GA4 setup uses. Most teams set up Klaviyo once, miss one of the three settings, and end up with split data across multiple rows.

Here is the practical setup.

Where the toggles live

1. Account-level default. Account → Settings → Other → UTM tracking. Set "Add UTM parameters to outbound links" to on. This applies to all campaigns and flows by default.

2. Per-campaign override. Inside the campaign builder, under "Tracking & links" → "UTM parameters." Override the account default for this specific campaign.

3. Per-flow override. Inside a flow's email step, under "Tracking" → "UTM parameters." Override the account default for this specific flow.

The three levels exist because different sends need different campaign values. A weekly newsletter campaign uses one campaign value. The post-purchase flow uses another. Setting them per-level keeps the attribution clean.

What Klaviyo adds by default

For a campaign named "Q2 Launch":

utm_source=Klaviyo
utm_medium=email
utm_campaign=Q2 Launch

Same problems as Mailchimp's defaults:

1. utm_source is capitalized ("Klaviyo" instead of "klaviyo"). Lowercase the value at the account level.
2. utm_campaign carries spaces. Override at the campaign level with hyphenated lowercase: q2-launch.
3. No utm_content. Klaviyo does not auto-tag utm_content; you append it manually in the URL field of each template link.

Account-level setup

Account → Settings → Other → UTM tracking. Three fields:

utm_source: klaviyo
utm_medium: email
utm_campaign: {{ campaign.name | lowercase | replace_string: " ", "-" }}

The third value uses Klaviyo's Liquid templating to lowercase and hyphenate the campaign name automatically. Most teams skip this and end up with utm_campaign=Q2 Launch rendering as Q2%20Launch in URLs. The Liquid filter pattern fixes it on the way out.

For the medium value, default email is correct. Some teams use email-newsletter or transactional for finer-grained channel grouping; either works as long as the value is in GA4's Email channel grouping match list.

Flow-level setup

Klaviyo flows are automations: welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back. Each flow gets its own UTM settings inside the flow's email step.

The convention we recommend:

The campaign value is what your team will use to slice automation performance in GA4. Using a stable value per flow makes the data legible: "win-back has been driving X conversions per month for the last six months."

Per-recipient utm_content via Liquid

Klaviyo's Liquid templating extends to URL parameters. You can set utm_content based on the recipient's segment, the email step, or the trigger that fired the flow.

In the campaign editor or flow step, under Tracking → UTM parameters, add a custom utm_content value:

utm_content: {{ segment.name | lowercase | replace_string: " ", "-" }}

Now every recipient's UTM-tagged link carries their segment as utm_content. In GA4, you can slice clicks by segment without manually building variant URLs.

This is cleaner than the manual approach Mailchimp requires and is the strongest reason teams pick Klaviyo for sophisticated email programs.

What about transactional emails?

Do not auto-tag transactional emails. Receipt emails, password resets, shipping notifications should not carry UTMs. The Klaviyo flow toggle for UTM tracking should be OFF on transactional templates.

If you use the same Klaviyo flow for both marketing and transactional sends (not recommended), split the flow into two so each can have its own UTM settings.

Verifying the setup

Three checks before relying on the data:

1. Send a test campaign to yourself. Open a link from the test email in incognito. Confirm the URL bar shows lowercase utm_source, the right campaign, and the right utm_content.
2. Check GA4 Realtime while clicking. The session should appear with utm_source=klaviyo and the right campaign value.
3. Audit existing flows. Go through every active flow and confirm the UTM settings are correct. Most teams have at least one flow with the default capitalized utm_source still in place.

Wrapping Klaviyo links in a shortener

If you want branded short URLs in your Klaviyo emails (acme.co/q2 instead of long tagged URLs), the workflow:

1. 01

   Build the long tagged URL.

   Either let Klaviyo auto-tag, or paste a pre-tagged URL into the Klaviyo template's link field.
2. 02

   Shorten the URL through your tool.

   Trakl, Bitly, Rebrandly, Short.io. Paste the Klaviyo-tagged URL, get a short URL.
3. 03

   Replace the link in the Klaviyo template.

   Where you previously used the long URL, paste the short URL. Klaviyo's auto-tag does not re-tag URLs that already have UTMs.
4. 04

   Disable Klaviyo's UTM tracking for this template if needed.

   If your shortened URL already has UTMs and you want Klaviyo to not duplicate them, toggle the campaign-level UTM tracking off for this specific send.

The trade-off: Klaviyo's analytics on opens-vs-clicks still works on the shortened URL, but the click count Klaviyo reports may differ slightly from your shortener's because of how Klaviyo's tracking pixel interacts with the short link.

Common Klaviyo-specific mistakes

• Capitalized utm_source. The most common. Override at the account level once.
• Forgetting to set UTM tracking on flows. Account-level default does not always apply to flows; check each flow individually.
• Using campaign.name without the lowercase Liquid filter. Spaces and capitals leak through.
• Setting different conventions per flow. Pick a consistent format across all flows so your GA4 reports group cleanly.

For the per-flow overrides where Klaviyo's account-level UTM template does not apply, the free Trakl UTM builder generates the tagged URL once and you paste it into the flow's link field.

• Tagging links inside transactional emails. Receipts and shipping notifications should not carry UTMs.

For the broader email tagging strategy, UTM tracking for email campaigns covers the patterns. For Mailchimp specifically, UTM tracking in Mailchimp is the parallel guide.