How to create a multilingual email campaign using Smart Translations

Learn how to create and send an email campaign in multiple languages, depending on the language preferences of your audience. Klaviyo can translate a campaign’s content to 60+ languages.

Localizing campaigns is great if you have or plan to expand to an international customer base. Sending emails in each subscriber’s preferred language allows you to reach a wider audience which can increase overall engagement.

Before you begin

Enable Smart Translations from your account settings.

If you haven’t already, learn the basics of how to create and send an email campaign. This article mainly covers translation features for campaigns.

Translate a campaign

Make sure your email is fully edited and ready to send in your original language before translating. Otherwise, you’ll have to go through the translation process again if you make edits to the original content.

1. Create a campaign or edit an existing draft campaign.
2. On the Recipients step of the campaign wizard, make sure to add lists or segments to your campaign’s audience that you know have multiple language preferences.
3. If you haven’t already, add an email template to your campaign.
4. On the Message step, click Edit to open the template editor.
5. Click Translate in the top right.
6. Choose the original language that the content will be created in.
7. Select what languages you want to translate your campaign into by checking the box next to each language. The recommended languages are based on the preferred languages of your campaign’s audience. This section will also include any languages you chose in your translation settings.
8. If desired, click the dropdown under Additional languages to view and select languages that aren’t recommended.
9. If desired, choose a Fallback language for when a customer’s preferred language is unavailable. This can be different from the original language.
   
10. Click Translate.
11. On the next step, review all the email elements that will be translated. You can manually edit any of these elements if needed. You can also click the edit button next to listed images to change them to ones appropriate for the selected language.
    
12. Click the edit button next to a listed text block to review and edit the full text.
    
13. If you selected multiple languages to translate into, click the arrows at the top or use the dropdown to switch between languages.
14. If you want to add more languages or remove the currently selected language, click the name of the language.
    
15. Once you’re done, click Save.

Editing original content after translating

If you edit the original content of the email after you’ve already translated, a warning will appear at the top of the editor notifying you that your edits will affect translation.

To correct any potential translation errors:

1. Click Review translations next to the warning message.
2. Click Update translation to update all out-of-sync blocks which are highlighted in yellow.
   
3. To individually edit an element, click the pencil icon and choose from the following:
   • Re-translate - translate any changed text.
   • Match source - match image or URL to the original source.
   • Edit - manually modify the element
   • Ignore - keep element as is.

Translations for cloned messages and A/B tests

If you clone a campaign with translations, the new campaign will keep all translations from the original which you can freely edit. Learn how to clone a campaign.

When you create an A/B test, new variations will keep translations from the original email.

Additional resources

Learn more about editing and scheduling campaigns:

• How to edit or reschedule a campaign
• How to cancel a scheduled or sending campaign
• Email campaign scheduled and send options