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Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing platform. Connecting it to Referly keeps a Klaviyo list topped up with your affiliates automatically, so you can send them newsletters, program announcements, and campaigns from the same tool you already use for your customers — without exporting a CSV every week. This guide walks through the whole setup, including the steps you take inside Klaviyo.

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What this integration does

Referly’s Klaviyo integration is a one-way contact sync. It keeps your affiliates’ contact details flowing into one Klaviyo list. It is deliberately narrow, so it’s worth being clear about the edges before you set it up. What Referly sends to Klaviyo: What Referly does not send to Klaviyo: Two consequences follow from that list, and they’re the ones people are most often surprised by:
Because Referly does not send events or custom properties, you cannot build Klaviyo flows that trigger on a referral, a sale, or a commission milestone, and you cannot segment affiliates by performance inside Klaviyo. What you get is a clean, always-current list of your affiliates that you can email.
The sync runs in one direction only: Referly to Klaviyo. Changes you make in Klaviyo — editing a name, unsubscribing someone, deleting a profile — are never written back to Referly, and removing an affiliate from your program does not remove them from the Klaviyo list.
If you need referral or commission data to reach other tools, use Zapier, Make, or webhooks instead.

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Before you start

  • A Klaviyo account you can sign in to with permission to create API keys. In Klaviyo, that means an Owner, Admin, or Manager role.
  • Admin access to your Referly program.
  • A decision about where affiliates should land in Klaviyo: an existing list, or a new one Referly creates for you. A dedicated list is usually cleaner, because it keeps affiliates separate from customers.
One Klaviyo API key can be connected to one Referly program. If you run several programs and want each to sync, create a separate private API key in Klaviyo for each one.

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Create a private API key in Klaviyo

Everything in this section happens inside Klaviyo, not Referly. A private API key is a secret credential that lets Referly add contacts to your Klaviyo account on your behalf.
1

Open your Klaviyo account settings

Sign in to Klaviyo. Select your organization name in the bottom left corner, then choose Settings.
2

Go to the API keys tab

In Settings, open the API keys tab. You’ll see any keys that already exist, along with your public API key (also called your site ID). The public key is not the one you need.
3

Create the key

Select Create Private API Key. Give it a name you’ll recognise later — Referly works well — so you can tell which tool a key belongs to if you ever need to revoke it.
4

Choose Full access

Klaviyo offers three access levels: Read-only, Full, and Custom. Choose Full access. Referly needs to read your lists, create a list if you ask it to, and add profiles, and Full access covers all of that.If your security policy rules out a full-access key, choose Custom instead and grant Full access on both Lists and Profiles. Anything narrower will fail at some point in the flow.
5

Create and copy the key

Select Create. Klaviyo shows the key once and never again. Copy it straight away and paste it somewhere safe, such as a password manager.You also can’t edit a key’s access level after it’s created. If you pick the wrong one, delete the key and create a new one.

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Open the Klaviyo integration in Referly

Back in Referly, there are two places that open the same window. Use whichever you’re closest to. From the Integrations page: in the left sidebar, select Integrations, find the Klaviyo card, and select it. Then select Connect Klaviyo. From your email settings: in the left sidebar, select Settings, open Affiliate Portal, then Email Settings. Select Connect Email Integration, and pick Klaviyo from the Choose Email Integration window. Either route opens the Connect to Klaviyo window.

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Paste and validate your API key

Paste the private API key you copied from Klaviyo into the Klaviyo API key field. Select the eye icon on the right of the field if you want to check what you pasted. Now select Validate API Key. Referly calls Klaviyo, confirms the key works, and pulls in the lists that already exist in your account. You should see a confirmation that the key was validated. Validation is not optional — the Connect button stays greyed out until it succeeds. It also protects you from connecting with a key that has the wrong access level, which would otherwise fail silently later.
If you edit the API key field after validating, Referly clears the validation and the loaded lists. Validate again before continuing.

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Name the connection

In Account Nickname, type anything that helps you recognise this Klaviyo account later — your business name is a good default. This is a label for your own benefit and is never shown to affiliates.

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Choose or create the list

Once your key is validated, Referly shows you two ways to pick a destination. Use one or the other, not both — filling in one clears the other.
1

Use an existing list

Open the list dropdown and pick any list from your Klaviyo account. Referly will add every affiliate to it.
2

Or create a new one

Leave the dropdown empty and type a name under Or create a new list — for example Referly Affiliates. Referly creates that list in Klaviyo for you as part of connecting.
If the dropdown is empty and you see a note that no lists were found, your Klaviyo account simply doesn’t have any lists yet. Type a name to create one.

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Connect

Select Connect. Referly does three things at once:
  1. Creates the new list in Klaviyo, if you asked for one.
  2. Imports every affiliate currently in your program into that list, in a single batch.
  3. Saves the connection so future affiliates are added automatically.
You’ll see a confirmation that your Klaviyo account was connected, and a green Connected badge appears with the list name next to it.

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How ongoing syncing works

After the initial import, Referly adds an affiliate to your Klaviyo list at the moment they become active in your program. That covers every way an affiliate can arrive:
  • They sign up through your affiliate portal or signup widget.
  • You approve someone who was waiting for approval. If approval is manual, nothing is sent to Klaviyo while they’re pending — they’re added the moment you approve them.
  • You add an affiliate by hand, or import a batch of them.
  • An affiliate is created through your automation tools or the API.
Affiliates who are banned or deactivated after they’ve been synced stay in your Klaviyo list. Referly never removes anyone from Klaviyo — if you want them out, remove them in Klaviyo.
The very first import is different from the ongoing sync: it includes everyone currently in your program, including affiliates still waiting for approval. Only the ongoing sync is limited to active affiliates.

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Verify it worked

Run through this checklist after connecting:
1

Check the badge in Referly

Reopen the Klaviyo window. It should show Connected with your list name, and the API key field should be locked.
2

Find the list in Klaviyo

In Klaviyo, open Audience, then Lists & Segments, and open the list you chose or created. Your affiliates should be there.Klaviyo processes the import as a background job, so give it a few minutes on a large program before you worry. If a lot of affiliates are still missing after that, check the troubleshooting section below.
3

Spot-check a profile

Open one affiliate’s profile in Klaviyo and confirm the email, first name, and last name match what Referly shows on their affiliate detail page.
4

Test a new signup

Sign up a test affiliate through your affiliate portal, approve them if your program needs approval, then refresh the list in Klaviyo. They should appear.
This is the single most important thing to understand about the integration. Referly adds affiliates to your Klaviyo list as list members. It does not set their email marketing consent. In Klaviyo, being on a list and being subscribed to marketing are two different things, and Klaviyo will not deliver marketing email to a profile that hasn’t consented. So a brand-new affiliate synced from Referly typically lands in your list with a consent status of “Never subscribed”, and will be skipped when you send a campaign. What to do about it:
  • Open your list in Klaviyo and look at the email consent column to see where each affiliate stands.
  • Collect consent the way you normally would — a Klaviyo signup form, a preference page, or a subscribe link in the transactional emails Referly already sends.
  • Affiliates who were already subscribed customers in Klaviyo keep their existing consent, so they’re unaffected.
  • Referly’s own affiliate emails are transactional and continue to send regardless. This only affects marketing campaigns you send from Klaviyo.

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What you can build in Klaviyo

Within the limits above, an always-current affiliate list is genuinely useful:
  • A welcome sequence for new affiliates. Trigger a Klaviyo flow on someone joining the list to introduce your program, share your best-performing creative, and set expectations.
  • A program newsletter. Send campaigns to the list when you launch a product, change commission rates, or run a seasonal push.
  • Recruitment and re-engagement. Combine list membership with the engagement data Klaviyo collects on its own — opens, clicks, site activity — to find affiliates who’ve gone quiet.
  • Exclusions. Suppress your affiliate list from customer campaigns so affiliates don’t receive offers meant for buyers.
For anything that depends on referral performance — a bonus announcement when someone hits ten sales, for instance — use Referly’s built-in performance bonuses and affiliate emails, which do have access to that data.

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Change the list or the API key

Both the API key and the list are locked once you’re connected. To change either one, disconnect and connect again with the new details. Reconnecting to a different list re-imports every affiliate into the new list. The old list keeps the affiliates it already has.

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Disconnect Klaviyo

Open the Klaviyo window and select Disconnect. Referly stops syncing immediately and forgets your API key. Nothing is deleted on the Klaviyo side — your list stays exactly as it is, with all its profiles, so you don’t lose anything by disconnecting. Revoke the API key in Klaviyo afterwards if you don’t plan to reconnect.

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Troubleshooting

Almost always one of these:
  • You pasted the public API key (your site ID) instead of a private one. Go back to the API keys tab in Klaviyo and create a private key.
  • A stray space or line break was copied along with the key. Clear the field and paste again.
  • The key was created with Read-only access. Klaviyo can’t change a key’s access level after creation — delete it and create a new one with Full access.
  • The key has been revoked or deleted in Klaviyo. Create a fresh one.
Your Klaviyo account has no lists yet, or the key was created with Custom access that doesn’t include Lists. Either type a name to have Referly create a list, or recreate the key with Full access.
Each Klaviyo API key can only be attached to one Referly program. If you’re setting up a second program, create a second private API key in Klaviyo and use that one.
The most common cause is an access level that’s too narrow — reading lists succeeds, but creating a list or importing profiles fails. Recreate the key with Full access and try again. If you were creating a new list, check Klaviyo first: the list may already have been created, in which case pick it from the dropdown instead of creating another.
Work through these in order:
  • Give it a few minutes. Klaviyo runs imports as a background job.
  • Confirm you’re looking at the same list shown on the Connected badge in Referly.
  • Check the affiliate’s status in Referly. Only active affiliates are synced after the initial import, so anyone still pending won’t be there until you approve them.
  • Search Klaviyo for the affiliate’s email address directly. If the profile exists but isn’t on the list, they were likely added to a different list by an earlier connection.
  • Check the email address on the affiliate’s record in Referly for typos.
They’re on the list without marketing consent. See Check consent before you send above.
Referly never removes profiles from Klaviyo. Remove or suppress them in Klaviyo directly.

Email marketing integrations

How Referly connects to email tools, and what the other providers offer.

Mailchimp

Sync affiliates into a Mailchimp audience instead.

Emails your affiliates receive

The transactional emails Referly sends on its own.

Affiliate statuses

What active, pending, and deactivated mean for syncing.
Last modified on July 21, 2026