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 can include people who have visited your website but never opted in to email marketing. Emailing them can damage your deliverability and sender reputation. Restrict segments used for email marketing to profiles who can receive email marketing and have a Subscribed status. You can also restrict these segments to your main list, but list membership alone does not establish email consent.
• 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 subscribers that remain unengaged, retarget them in a different channel, such as on social media or with forms.
• Don't send to purchased lists
  Sending to purchased lists violates Klaviyo's Acceptable Use Policy. 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.
  Contest, sweepstakes, or giveaway entrants may not be engaged email subscribers, and sending to them can hurt your open rates and deliverability. Ask entrants to opt in to email marketing on your entry form before sending a welcome series, and send it only to those who opt in. Use the welcome series to introduce your brand and collect their email preferences.

Alternatives to email

• Sign-up forms
  Sign-up forms help you grow your list and collect more data about your subscribers. You can also target visitors in a segment with relevant content, such as an invitation to subscribe to email marketing. To show a form to a specific segment, Klaviyo must recognize the visitor as a profile in that segment. See the forms section of our Advanced segmentation reference for inspiration. A timely form on your website can help you re-engage your audience outside of email. To get started, see Getting started with sign-up forms.
• Social media
  Social media advertising offers another way to reach profiles outside of email. Use the Meta Ads integration to sync a Klaviyo list or segment to a custom audience. For example, build a segment of subscribers who received a particular email but didn't open it, then sync that segment for advertising on Facebook. This gives you another way to reach subscribers who aren't engaging with email.
• SMS
  SMS is another owned channel that Klaviyo offers. You can use it to reach profiles who have opted in to SMS marketing, even if they haven't opted in to email. Having a phone number or email consent does not give you SMS marketing consent. To learn more and get started sending text message marketing to SMS subscribers, see Getting Started with SMS and MMS. For inspiration when creating segments to target, head to our article on SMS segments.

Additional resources