Understanding active email profiles in Klaviyo

You will learn

Learn about active email profiles, including how they differ from suppressed email profiles, and how you can contact the people represented by these profiles.

This content requires Functional cookies to be enabled.

Update Cookie Settings

What is an active profile?

An active email profile has an email address and can receive email marketing through Klaviyo. Active does not mean the person has subscribed or recently engaged with your emails. There are 2 main categories of active profiles:

• Subscribers
  Subscribers have filled out a sign-up form or otherwise explicitly consented to receive email marketing.
• Profiles added by general engagement
  It is possible for someone to share their email with you without explicitly consenting to ongoing email marketing. For example, someone who placed an order or abandoned a checkout on your site may have added their email address during the checkout process, but never explicitly opted in.

Ecommerce integrations like Shopify and WooCommerce can add both types of active profiles to Klaviyo, depending on the actions a visitor takes while on your site.

Viewing a profile’s consent status

To see if a profile is able to receive messages and has provided consent, navigate to their profile.

At the top of the Details tab of a profile page, you'll see the profile’s consent status and ability to receive messages by channel. The different statuses you may see are:

• A green checkmark
  This symbol indicates that the profile is able to receive marketing because they have subscribed for the corresponding channel and are not suppressed.

• A red indicator
  This symbol indicates that the profile is unable to receive marketing through the channel. This may be because they opted out of marketing, or they are suppressed for a different reason. Note that consent status and suppression status are separate from each other. For example, a profile that is subscribed can be manually suppressed.
  

• A yellow warning icon
  If there is a yellow warning icon next to a person’s email information, it means the profile has neither subscribed nor opted out of email marketing. They are not suppressed and are able to receive email marketing (e.g., an abandoned cart flow email), but you should exercise caution when contacting them.
  
  

Profiles that never subscribed

There are certain methods of adding a profile to Klaviyo that result in consent status of Never Subscribed. Check the email channel indicator to confirm whether the profile can receive email marketing. If a profile has Never Subscribed and is also not a member of any lists, they were likely added to Klaviyo due to general engagement with your brand.

For example, this can include profiles synced through certain third-party integrations, or customers that started a checkout without subscribing on your ecommerce platform.

These profiles may have “implicit consent” depending on your local regulations, meaning you may be permitted to email them. If they can receive email marketing, they are eligible for campaign and flow emails, but we recommend exercising caution when contacting them. Make sure you’re only sending them emails you know they’ll be interested in, like abandoned cart flow messages or follow-up information from a recent order. Additionally, use good list cleaning practices and consider each contact’s engagement when deciding whether to send to them.

Contacting active profiles

It is possible to contact all active profiles in your account using both campaign and flow emails.

For regular campaigns, we recommend sending to engaged subscribers to reduce the risk of spam complaints and deliverability problems.

If you use segments for regular campaigns, combine subscription (e.g., Person can receive email marketing > Because person subscribed) AND engagement (e.g., Opened Email at least once in the last 30 days).

Both subscribers and profiles added through general engagement are eligible for certain flow emails. Some types of messaging, like abandoned cart flows, can serve as helpful reminders for recipients and are generally well received. However, keep in mind your local email compliance legislation and subscriber engagement. To exclude profiles who haven’t explicitly opted in (i.e., general engagement profiles), add a profile filter:

1. Open your flow and click its trigger. Under Profile filters, click Add, or Edit if filters already exist.
2. If this is your first profile filter, click Add profile filter. If filters already exist, add the subscription condition with AND so profiles must also meet your existing conditions.
3. Select If someone can or cannot receive marketing > Person can receive email marketing > Because person subscribed.
4. Click Save. If Changes affect live A/B tests appears, choose End and publish new tests or Continue current tests, then click Continue. Continuing current tests may skew their results.

Additional resources