Create a user profile and track website activity in Klaviyo using server Google Tag Manager

Email marketing is one of the most important aspects of any eCommerce site. It’s essential to keep your database updated and track user activities on-site in order to make sure that you are targeting an accurate audience with relevant content, which will lead them back into purchasing from your online store.

So how do you keep your Klaviyo user profiles updated? This guide will show how to create a new customer profile and track website activity in Klaviyo with the help of the server Google Tag Manager. 

Klaviyo creates one profile for each person. If integrated into your website, you can see how each Klaviyo profile interacted with your site and their respective activity timeline, including emails, opened or clicked on, website visits, events, parameters, etc. Klaviyo also provides relevant contact information, which gives more clarity about the user.

All this information can give you hundreds of angles for segmenting. You can use the profile’s website activity and event to build behavior-based email sequences and insert custom parameters into the email template. All possible only if you have robust integration with Klaviyo.

1. Create and set up a server Google Tag Manager container.

2. Send required data from the Web GTM container to the server container. It is crucial to send user emails to the server container since you must create a user profile in Klaviyo.  

There are two ways on how to send data to server GTM:

– Using GA 4 server-side configuration.

– Data Tag and Data Client.

I’ll use a Data Tag/Data Client in this guide since Data Tag can store user data in local storage or cookies. 

3. Use server GTM template gallery to add Klaviyo server tag. 

4. Create a new tag in the server GTM → Tag type Klaviyo → Add your Klaviyo Private API key (how to find Private API key) → Add variable with user email → Suggest enabling “Store email in cookies” → Add a trigger.

5. Test the setup. You should see that the Klaviyo tag fired in the server GTM, a new Klaviyo profile was added and Active on Site tracked. 

The guide explains how to create Klaviyo customer profiles and capture website activity using a sGTM container. However, it isn't the only way to connect Klaviyo with your server-side tracking setup.

If you're using Signals Gateway or Conversions API Gateway (CAPIG), you can integrate Klaviyo with the free Stape Conversion Tracking app. With this solution there is no need to configure a server GTM container. The app automatically processes CRM events from Klaviyo and sends them to your connected marketing and advertising platforms.

To get started, follow the setup guide for the Stape Conversion Tracking app for Klaviyo.

The right solution depends on how much flexibility you need and how you plan to use your customer data.

• Signals Gateway – a quick way to launch server-side tracking. The solution will work best if you need to send data from Klaviyo to a few different platforms.
• CAPIG – best for businesses that primarily rely on Meta. It provides an easy way to send server-side conversion data to Meta through the Conversions API without maintaining a server GTM environment.
• Server GTM – the most advanced and customizable option. In addition to creating Klaviyo profiles and tracking website activity, it lets you enrich events, transform incoming data, build custom workflows, and connect multiple marketing and analytics platforms from a single server-side setup.

Using server Google Tag Manager gives you tons of benefits. If we are talking only about Klaviyo, the main advantage is using the sGTM interface to create a new Klaviyo user profile and track website activity. Though you can use web GTM to track user activity, many users complain that the Klaviyo JavaScript slows down their site. Creating a new user profile is not even possible in web GTM. 

If you need help setting up server Google Tag Manage, reach out to stape’s care team via care@stape.io! We are happy to advise on best practices when it comes to using.