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 |
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
| 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. |