What are internal alerts?
Internal alerts are automated notifications that go out to your team members when a customer triggers a specific action or reaches a certain point in a marketing flow. While most flow actions send messages directly to customers, internal alerts notify your staff (such as sales reps, customer service agents, or account managers) so they can take specific follow-up actions.
These alerts serve as an early warning system for high-value moments that may benefit from a human touch. When a VIP customer abandons a cart, a new lead joins your wholesale list, or someone leaves a negative review, they notify the right person on your team, fast. This bridges the gap between automated marketing and personal outreach, allowing your team to step in exactly when it may matter most.
Let’s say a high-value shopper stops purchasing for 90 days. An internal alert might notify your customer service team automatically so they can reach out personally to make sure the customer doesn’t churn. This turns a potential lost opportunity into a meaningful interaction that strengthens the customer relationship.
Benefits of internal alerts
Customers often expect a high level of personalization and responsiveness from brands, and marketing automation typically delivers it because it’s based on real-time behaviors. But some moments call for a human touch that no automated message can replicate, no matter the channel.
When someone submits a complaint, makes a large purchase, or shows signs of disengagement, for example, even a personalized automated response may fall short. Internal alerts fill the gap by keeping your team informed and ready to respond with timely, personalized outreach when customers may need 1:1 attention.
Internal alerts also help teams work more efficiently by surfacing only the moments that need attention. Instead of constantly monitoring dashboards, digging through data, or reviewing every customer interaction manually, your team receives targeted alerts about the specific situations where their involvement can make a meaningful difference.
The result is not only better team coordination and internal efficiency, but also faster response times and a more satisfying experience for your customers.
Key features of internal alerts
Internal alerts rely on a few specific capabilities to keep your team informed and ready to act on high-value customer moments, including:
- Flow-based triggers: Internal alerts live within your automated flows, so they fire based on the same customer behaviors and conditions that trigger your marketing messages.
- Customizable recipient lists: Send alerts to a customizable list of recipients, from account users to customer service team members to external partners.
- Recipient management: Manage a list of alert recipients, each with their own confirmation and opt-out status, to control who receives notifications.
- Personalized message content: Internal alerts can pull in customer information from unified customer profiles, such as the customer's name, email address, recent purchase history, and other relevant profile data.
- Activity tracking: Monitor how many alerts are scheduled, sent, or skipped directly within the flow builder. The recipient activity view shows you, for each internal alert triggered, who received the notification message and which profile they were alerted about.
5 ways to use internal alerts
Internal alerts work best when they connect automated marketing to human follow-up at high-stakes moments. Here are 5 ways to use them:
- New subscriber alerts: Trigger an alert to your marketing team every time someone joins your email, SMS, or WhatsApp marketing lists.
- Customer service follow-up: Trigger an alert to your customer support team when a customer responds negatively to a survey or leaves a negative review.
- High-value customer alerts: Alert your team when someone new qualifies for your VIP program, or when someone new applies to your brand ambassador program so someone can promptly reach out with next steps.
- High-value purchase alerts: Notify your team when someone buys a big-ticket item so they can follow up with shipping and delivery details and support make sure the post-purchase experience goes smoothly.
- At-risk customer outreach: Alert your retention team when a high-value customer shows signs of disengagement, such as completing an entire win-back automation without purchasing.
How to implement internal alerts to enhance customer engagement
Setting up effective alerts starts with pinpointing exactly where your team’s intervention creates the most value. Here’s how to get started:
Step 1: Identify high-impact customer moments
Before creating any alerts, map out the key moments in the customer journey that signal a specific opportunity or risk. This strategic step helps confirm your internal alerts will focus on actions that directly influence customer experience and relationship-building, so your team doesn’t get bogged down by low-priority noise.
Audit your current customer lifecycle to find "dead ends" where automation stalls, or high-stakes thresholds where a human touch could move the conversation forward. Look for specific behaviors such as high-value cart abandonment, repeated visits to a cancellation page, or negative feedback submissions.
Step 2: Define alert triggers and message content
Configure the specific conditions that will automatically fire an alert based on customer behavior or profile data, such as a cart value above a certain threshold or a satisfaction score below a certain threshold.
Then, draft the alert's message content, making sure it contains enough context for the recipient to act without needing to log into a separate tool. Use dynamic variables to pull in relevant details like the customer's name, contact information, recent purchase history, and the specific action they took related to the internal alert.
Step 3: Route alerts to the right team members
The goal of an internal alert is to route the right information to the right person automatically. The use case of your internal alert will determine who receives the internal alert, whether it’s your sales team, your marketing team, your customer success team, or someone else.
Note that internal alert actions have their own recipient opt-in and opt-out process. All recipients must explicitly opt in to receive internal alerts from your account before they start receiving any messages.
Step 4: Establish clear follow-up protocols
An internal alert is only as useful as the action it inspires, so create clear standard operating procedures for your team that outline how to respond to each alert type. Without a playbook, alerts can pile up or result in inconsistent customer experiences.
Develop a simple script or checklist for every alert trigger that defines the who, what, and when of the response. For example, if a customer abandons a high-value cart, the protocol might be for a sales rep to make a personal phone call within 15 minutes offering assistance with the check-out process.
Step 5: Monitor performance and optimize for impact
Continuously track the frequency of your alerts and, more importantly, the resulting follow-ups to confirm they’re adding value for both team members and customers. Look for patterns that indicate healthier customer interactions and smoother team processes, such as timely responses, clearer handoffs, and fewer missed follow-ups.
Internal alerts turn your marketing automation into a tool that empowers your team to build stronger relationships at the moments that matter most.
Ready to connect your automated flows with timely human follow-up? Get started with internal alerts in Klaviyo today.