How to Connect a Klaviyo List to Facebook

Connecting your Klaviyo email list to Facebook Ads transforms your marketing from a guessing game into a precision-guided operation. It's one of the most effective ways to boost your ad performance, lower customer acquisition costs, and find more people who will love your brand. This guide walks you through the entire process, step-by-step, showing you how to sync your valuable Klaviyo segments directly with Facebook to create dynamic and highly profitable advertising campaigns.

Why Syncing Your Klaviyo List to Facebook is a Game-Changer

Diving into this integration does more than just move emails from one platform to another. It unlocks a set of powerful marketing strategies that are impossible to achieve with standard interest-based targeting. Tying your customer data directly to your advertising creates a symbiotic relationship where data from one platform actively improves results on the other.

1. Supercharge Your Remarketing Efforts

Your email subscribers are your warmest audience. They’ve already raised their hands and expressed interest in your brand. But let's face it: not everyone opens every email. By syncing a segment of engaged subscribers (or even unengaged ones you want to win back), you can reach them on Facebook and Instagram - platforms where they spend hours every day. This allows you to reinforce your message, promote new products, and stay top-of-mind with people who have already demonstrated intent.

Relatable Example:

Imagine you have a Klaviyo segment of people who opened your last five campaign emails but didn't click. They're interested but not yet convinced. By syncing this group to Facebook, you can run a targeted ad campaign showing them testimonials or user-generated content for the products featured in those emails. It’s a gentle, effective nudge in a different environment.

2. Build Unbeatable Lookalike Audiences

This is where the real power lies. A Lookalike Audience is a group of people Facebook finds who share characteristics with a source audience you provide. Instead of feeding Facebook a pixel of every website visitor, you can give it a highly-curated list of your very best customers directly from Klaviyo.

• Sync your "VIP Customers" segment (e.g., those who have spent over $500 or made 3+ purchases).
• Sync your "Repeat Buyers" segment.
• Sync a segment of customers who purchased a high-margin product.

Facebook's algorithm will then analyze the thousands of data points associated with these high-value customers and build a new audience of millions of users who look just like them. These lookalikes almost always outperform audiences built on generic interests like "yoga" or "skincare."

3. Stop Wasting Ad Spend on Existing Customers

Nothing feels more out of touch than getting bombarded with introductory "20% off your first purchase" ads from a brand you bought from last week. It's a waste of your ad budget and a poor experience for your loyal customers. With the Klaviyo integration, you can create segments of recent purchasers and sync them to Facebook purely for exclusion purposes. By excluding this group from your top-of-funnel acquisition campaigns, you make sure your money is spent only on reaching new potential customers.

4. Keep Your Audiences Fresh on Autopilot

Forgetting to update a manually uploaded CSV list of customers is a common mistake. The Klaviyo-Facebook integration solves this by being dynamic. When a new customer joins your "VIP" segment in Klaviyo, they are automatically added to the corresponding Custom Audience in Facebook. Conversely, if someone's behavior changes, they are removed. This ensures your ad audiences are always up-to-date without any manual busywork, keeping your targeting sharp and relevant around the clock.

What You'll Need Before You Get Started

Getting a few things in order first will make the setup process smooth and hassle-free. Think of this as your pre-flight checklist to make sure all systems are a go.

• A Meta Business Suite (formerly Business Manager) Account: To use Custom Audiences to their full potential, you need a Meta Business account, not just a personal ad account. This is the central hub for managing all your business assets, from ad accounts to pixels. If you don't have one, it’s free and simple to set up.
• An Active Klaviyo Account: This is a given, but it's important to be logged into the account you intend to sync.
• Admin Permissions: To grant the right permissions, you’ll need to have Admin-level access to both your Meta Business Suite and your Klaviyo account.
• A Well-Defined Klaviyo Segment: Don't just plan on syncing your entire "Newsletter" list. The magic is in the segmentation. Before you start, think about creating one or two high-value segments you can test with. Here are some powerful ideas:
  • VIP Customers: Use properties like "Placed Order at least 3 times over all time" and/or "Total Revenue is more than $X".
  • Recent High-Value Purchasers: "Placed Order in the last 30 days" AND "Order Value is greater than $100".
  • Inactive Subscribers to Win Back: "Is in Newsletter list" AND "Has opened 0 emails in the last 90 days".
  • Cart Abandoners: "Started Checkout zero times since starting this flow" AND "Added to Cart at least once in the last 7 days".

The Step-by-Step Process to Connect Klaviyo to Facebook

With your accounts ready and your segments defined, making the actual connection is straightforward. Klaviyo has streamlined this process to just a few clicks.

Step 1: Navigate to the Integrations Tab in Klaviyo

Log in to your Klaviyo account. In the bottom-left corner, click on your account name to open the settings menu. From there, select "Integrations." On the Integrations page, either search for "Facebook Advertising" in the search bar or find it in the alphabetical list and click on it.

Step 2: Add and Authenticate Your Facebook Account

On the Facebook Advertising integration page, click the "Add Integration" button. A pop-up window will appear prompting you to log into your Facebook account. Important: after logging in, Facebook will ask you to grant Klaviyo a series of permissions. It's vital that you accept all of these permissions. Declining any of them can cause the integration to fail or not work as expected. This gives Klaviyo the necessary access to sync and manage audiences on your behalf.

Step 3: Select Your Ad Account and Configure Initial Options

Once you've granted permission, the pop-up will close, and Klaviyo will show you a dropdown list containing all of the Meta Ad Accounts associated with your profile. Carefully select the correct ad account you want to sync your segments with. Below this, you'll see an optional setting for syncing leads from Facebook Lead Ads. This is a nice bonus, you can select a Klaviyo list where you'd like any leads generated from those specific ad formats to be automatically added. After making your selections, click "Complete Setup".

That's it! The core integration is now active. The next part is deciding which segments you want to push to Facebook.

Syncing Your Klaviyo Segments to Facebook

Now that the platforms are connected, you can tell Klaviyo which lists and segments you want to turn into Facebook Custom Audiences.

Step 1: Add a New Audience Sync

Within the Facebook Advertising integration settings page in Klaviyo, scroll down to the section titled "Sync Klaviyo Lists & Segments to Facebook Custom Audiences." Click the button that says "Add new sync."

Step 2: Select Your Klaviyo Segment & Name Your Audience

Two fields will appear. In the first dropdown, choose the Klaviyo list or segment you want to sync. The second field is where you name the audience as it will appear inside your Facebook Ads Manager. Adopt a clear naming convention so you can find it easily later. A good practice is to prefix it with "Klaviyo" and add specifics.

• Good Example: Klaviyo - VIPs (3+ Purchases) - 180d
• Another Good Example: Klaviyo - Email Engaged - No Purchase - 90d

Step 3: Start the Sync

Click the "Create Custom Audience & Start Sync" button. Klaviyo will get to work, bundling up the profiles in that segment and sending them over to Facebook. You can repeat this process for as many segments as you'd like to use in your ad campaigns.

Best Practices and Quick Tips

Setting up the sync is just the beginning. To get the most out of this connection, keep these points in mind.

• Syncing Takes Time (At First): The very first time you sync a segment, it can take anywhere from a few hours to a full day for Facebook to process and populate the audience. In your Ads Manager, the audience size might show as "Populating" or "Below 1,000" for a while. This is completely normal, so be patient. Subsequent syncs are much faster.
• Start with High-Intent Segments: Don't boil the ocean by syncing thirty segments at once. Start with one or two of your highest-value groups, like your VIPs, to build a powerful Lookalike Audience. This gives you a quick win and shows immediate value.
• Manage Your Audience Size & Match Rate: The number of people in your Facebook Custom Audience will likely be smaller than the number of profiles in your Klaviyo segment. Facebook matches profiles based on the email address used for their personal account. Not every customer uses the same email for shopping as they do for Facebook. A match rate between 50-80% is common and considered good.
• Build Your Lookalikes: Once your "Klaviyo - VIPs" audience finishes populating in Facebook Ads Manager, navigate to Audiences, select that audience, click the three dots, and choose "Create Lookalike." Start with a 1% lookalike in your primary countries for the highest fidelity audience.

Final Thoughts

Connecting your Klaviyo email data with Facebook Ads closes the feedback loop between your most valuable owned marketing channel and your most powerful paid acquisition platform. You can finally stop guessing and start leveraging your own first-party data to re-engage your warmest leads, exclude existing customers, and discover thousands of new customers who look just like your best ones.

Of course, once you’ve perfected your audiences on Facebook, the challenge shifts to keeping them engaged with great content. This is where creating and scheduling a high volume of quality posts, especially the short-form video that resonates today, can feel like a full-time job. To manage this, I use Postbase. Since it was built specifically for the reality of producing Reels, TikToks, and Stories, I can upload my content once and schedule it across all my platforms from a single visual calendar. It's a lifesaver for making sure those high-value audiences you just built actually see amazing content from your brand, without needing to spend all day on social media.