How to allow customers to pause SMS messages during holidays

How to allow customers to pause SMS messages during holidays

Estimated 7 minute read

Updated Aug 5, 2025, 12:00 AM EST

Table of contents

You will learn
Before you begin
Decide on the property that will indicate a pause
Ask customers to text in a word
Collect a property using a button on a form
Create a segment of people who paused
Exclude the segment from your campaigns
After the holiday
Additional resources

You will learn

Learn how to allow customers to pause receiving text campaigns without unsubscribing completely from SMS.

Use this strategy before you launch large, multi-message campaigns or around holidays that may be sensitive.

Why give people the option to pause SMS?

By giving people the option to pause messages, you:

Keep a subscriber who otherwise may have opted out.
Give your customers a more positive experience by letting them choose if they want certain messages.
Engage with a smaller, more interested audience and save on SMS credits. This may also improve click and conversion rates on follow-up messages.

What times of year should I do this?

Give the option to pause before your biggest sending times of the year and any sensitive holidays, including:

Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Mother’s and Father’s Day
Valentine’s Day and White Day
Christmas
Back to school
Easter
Australia Day

Before you begin

The process for allowing customers to pause is:

Decide on the property that will indicate a pause.
Ask subscribers to either:
Text in a certain word. *Note that this does not work for branded sender IDs.
Click a button on a sign-up form.
Create a segment of people with the property.
Exclude the segment from any campaigns related to that holiday.

Decide on the property that will indicate a pause

The property will be used in your flow, form, segment, etc., so it’s important to think through what you want to use before you start setting these up.

You can use the same property every time or change it for each major promotion or holiday. Each approach has its own pros and cons, as explained in the table below.


	Pro	Con
Re-use the same property	Single setup you can re-use every time with minimal changes	No insight into who has paused SMS for a certain holiday or event in the past
Use a unique property each time	Allows you to analyze who has opted out of past campaigns	Requires you to update the flows and segments for each new campaign

Once you decide on your property, add it to at least 1 test profile in your account with a value of true. This makes the property available when you build your segment.

Next, we discuss how to collect this property from your subscribers, starting with asking customers to text in a certain word. If you only have a branded sender ID, jump ahead to learn how to collect a property using a button in a sign-up form.

Ask customers to text in a word

If you have a number that can receive text messages (i.e., not a branded sender ID), you can:

Choose the word for subscribers to text in.
Prepare your campaign to ask people to text you a certain word.
Use a flow to add a profile property for anyone who texts the keyword in.

Choose the word for subscribers to text in

The word you choose to use should be:

Unique enough that subscribers won’t text it accidentally (e.g., don’t use “heart” during Valentine’s Day).
Not part of another common word someone might text in (e.g., don’t use “no” since it’s part of many other words, like “not,” “afternoon,” etc.)
Easy enough for subscribers to spell and text to you.

Prepare a campaign to ask if subscribers want to pause

We say “prepare” because while you need information from the campaign, you don’t want to actually send it until you finish setting up the flow.

Navigate to the Campaigns tab.
Click Create campaign.
Name the campaign and add any tags. Choose Single channel if prompted, then select Text message.
Select Continue.
Choose your recipients (i.e., anyone you plan to market to during the holiday).
Select Next.
Design your message.

Return to the Campaigns tab.
Expand the campaign to show its message, then open the message’s actions menu.
Click Copy ID for the message. Use the message’s ID, not the ID of the overall campaign.

Do not send this campaign until you set up the flow (discussed in the next section).

Create a flow that triggers when a subscriber texts your word

We’ll say that “pause” is the word subscribers will text in. Now, we need a flow to respond and add a profile property when a subscriber texts in this word.

We provide the basic steps here; however, see this article on creating a flow to respond to inbound SMS messages for tips and more details.

Navigate to Flows > Create flow > Build your own.
Name the flow, then click Create flow.
Select All triggers > Metric.
Choose Sent Text Message as the action that triggers the flow. This metric records texts sent by customers to your number.
In the Trigger filters section, click Add.
Click Add trigger filter.
Use the following filters:
Message > equals [add the copied message ID]AND
Message Body > contains Pause OR
Message Body > contains pause
Include alternate spellings, typos, or capitalizations by adding OR within the Message Body group. Keep the Message condition joined to this group with AND.

The Message filter matches replies to the most recent text delivered within the last 24 hours. A reply after that window, or after another text is delivered, may not match this campaign. Use the form option below if customers need more time to pause.

Click Save > Confirm and save.
Add a Text message action directly below the trigger.
In the right sidebar, click Edit in the Content section.
Customize the content for that SMS.

Select Save & continue.
Under the SMS, add a Profile property update action.
Click + Add step.
Set the action to Create new property and enter your chosen property name (e.g., Paused? for a generic property or Paused-BFCM2024 if you want to change it for each promotion).
Set the property type to Boolean and value to True, then click Save.

Click Review and turn on.
Set the flow to Live and then save.
Go back and send the campaign to ask subscribers if they want to pause SMS.

If you also are using a branded sender ID, continue reading. Otherwise, skip ahead to learn how to create a segment of people who asked to pause.

Collect a property using a button on a form

For branded sender IDs, you need a method that doesn’t rely on people texting you back.

There are 2 steps to this:

Create a form that asks if subscribers want to pause.
Send a campaign that links to your form.

Create a form that asks if subscribers want to pause

You can create a form and collect a hidden profile property whenever someone clicks a button.

Make sure Klaviyo’s onsite tracking is installed on the page you link to. With Show to any existing profile selected, the form only appears when Klaviyo recognizes the visitor.

To do this:

Create a full-page form in Klaviyo.
Design the form as you see fit, but make sure you include at least 1 button.

Click on the button (e.g., “Pause” in the example above).
Under Button click action, set the following:
Action to Submit form.
After Submit to Show next step.

Under Submit hidden fields, click + Add a property.
Select your chosen property (e.g., Paused? or Paused-BFCM2024), or type its name to create it. Set Value to true.

Above the preview of your form, select Success to design the page that shows after a user clicks the button.

On the Success page, confirm that the user will no longer get texts for that holiday.

Select Targeting & behavior.
In the Display tab, set the following:
1. Timing to Immediately.
2. Frequency to 0 days.

If you plan to re-use this form for any holiday in the future, uncheck the box for Don’t show again if form was submitted or if go to URL button was clicked. This will allow the form to show every time someone navigates to the link.

Devices to Both desktop and mobile.

Scroll to the top of the sidebar and click into the Targeting tab.
Change the targeting settings so that:
Visitors to Show to any existing profile.
URLs to Only show on certain URLs > Containing > #pause Note that here, “#pause” is an anchor link we’ll use for our campaign. The hashtag is required, but you can replace “pause” with another word.

Click Publish to set the form live.

Create your campaign with a link to your form

Navigate to the Campaigns tab.
Click Create campaign.
Name the campaign and add any tags. Choose Single channel if prompted, then select Text message.
Select Continue.
Choose your recipients.
Select Next.
Design your message.
For the link, add your website, then add the anchor link (e.g., #pause) at the end. Example: www.mywebsite.com#pause

Keep automatic link shortening turned on so the link can identify the recipient when they visit your site. Before sending to your audience, test the link in a delivered text and check that clicking the form’s button adds the pause property to your profile.

Click Next.
Schedule or send the campaign.

Create a segment of people who paused

Create a segment of everyone whose pause property is true, whether they replied to your text or clicked the button on your form.

Navigate to Audience > Lists & segments, then select Create > Segment.
Name your segment (e.g., Pause segment). If a name dialog opens, click Create segment to continue to the segment builder.
Add your pause property as the segment’s condition (e.g., Paused? or Paused-BFCM2024): Properties about someone > Paused? is true, with the type set to Boolean.

Click Create segment.

Exclude the segment from your campaigns

Before sending holiday messages, exclude the pause segment from each related campaign. In the campaign’s recipient settings, select the segment under Don’t send to. Apply exclusions separately to any holiday flows or forms you also want to stop showing these customers.

The example below shows how this looks for a Klaviyo campaign.

The pause property does not unsubscribe customers from SMS or stop other messages automatically. Check that your exclusions are in place before sending the holiday campaigns.

After the holiday

For campaigns after the holiday, stop excluding this pause segment. Remove any temporary holiday exclusions from flows or forms when you are ready to resume them.

If you reuse the same property, reset it to false for the profiles that paused before collecting requests for the next holiday. You can update profile properties in bulk using a CSV import. Keep subscribers’ existing consent unchanged when importing.

Before the next holiday, update the invitation and confirmation messages, the campaign message ID in the reply flow’s trigger filter, and any holiday-specific form text. If you use a new property for each holiday, update the flow, form, and segment to use that property.

Additional resources

How to use SMS in replenishment flows

Learn how to add SMS to your replenishment flow in Klaviyo to turn one-time customers into repeat buyers. - How to send order updates via SMS for Shopify

Learn how to send order updates via text to people not opted in to your SMS marketing program.

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