How to market to profiles you shouldn't email

You will learn

Learn about alternative ways to market to profiles that have not opted in for your email marketing. 

Klaviyo's close integration with your website and ecommerce platform means that you'll have a vast amount of data at your disposal, particularly for building segments and flows. Klaviyo pulls in information about customers, subscribers, and even web browsers. This also means you may have a number of profiles who have not opted in for your email marketing.

Emailing contacts who haven't opted in can cause your emails to be marked as spam and negatively impact your deliverability. It's important to understand who you should and should not email, as well as alternative ways to market to those contacts.

Practices to avoid

• Don't email broad segments of people
  such as those with conditions like email contains @ or Active on Site at least once over all time. These segments will pull in people in your account who have simply visited your website at some point but never opted in. This can seriously damage your deliverability and sender reputation. Instead, make sure that all of your segments have a condition that restricts them to your main list. This will ensure that you're only emailing people who have opted in.
• Don't re-send the same campaign to people who didn't open it the first time
  If they didn't open it the first time and you didn't change anything about the email, odds are they won't open it the second time. Repeatedly sending to people who don't open your emails will lead to low open rates and, consequently, harm your deliverability. You can try sending a completely different campaign (different subject line and content) as a follow-up to the first if it is a particularly important email, like a product release. For subscribes that remain unengaged, retarget them in a different channel, such as on social media or with forms.
• Don't send to purchased lists
  This violates CAN-SPAM as well as Klaviyo's Terms of Service. Instead, grow your list organically using sign-up forms. 
• When running a contest, sweepstakes, or giveaway, don't automatically add people who sign up to your main list.
  Oftentimes, these are not very engaged leads, and sending to them can later hurt your open rates and deliverability. Instead, funnel contest, sweepstakes, or giveaway sign-ups into a welcome series, where they can choose to opt in to receive your newsletter emails.

Alternatives to email

• Sign-up forms
  Sign-up forms help you grow your list and collect more data about your subscribers. Moreover, you can use forms as a way to target individuals in segments with content that directly pertains to them. Head to the forms section of our Guide to Advanced Segmentation for inspiration. A timely form on your website may be just the thing to re-engage your audience outside of email. For getting started information, head to our Guide to creating a sign-up form.
• Social media
  Another way to target audiences outside of email is via social media pages, such as Facebook. You can build a segment in Klaviyo that includes subscribers who didn't open a particular email; then, sync it with a custom audience in Facebook. That way, you may reach people in a way that resonates better with them if email has yet to engage them with your brand.
• SMS
  SMS is another key, owned channel that Klaviyo offers. To learn more and get started sending text message marketing to subscribers, head to Getting Started with SMS and MMS. For inspiration when creating segments to target, head to our article on SMS segments.

Additional resources

• Advanced segmentation reference
• Course: Grow your business with Klaviyo's Facebook Advertising integration