How to clean your list to maintain good deliverability

You will learn

Learn how to clean your email, SMS, and mobile push lists to avoid sending to contacts who aren’t interested in your content. This process allows you to keep in touch with the subscribers who are most engaged with your messages, so you are seen as a trusted sender with a good reputation.

The process of list cleaning for deliverability involves 2 steps: 

1. Creating a channel-specific segment of unengaged contacts 
2. Excluding that segment from sends to that channel

Why list cleaning is important 

List cleaning is key to maintaining good deliverability and making sure your emails land in recipients' inboxes. List cleaning allows you to accomplish the following:

• Increase open and click rates
  By pre-emptively excluding unengaged contacts, you are prioritizing sends to those who do open and click. This brings up your overall open rate, and click rate. In turn, anti-spam reporting agencies recalculate your sending reputation (much like a credit score) and more of your email is put into inboxes as a result. Just as the probability you will get a loan increases with your credit score, so to does your probability of being placed in the inbox increase with an increase in open and click rate.
• Reduce unsubscribe rates, and spam complaint rates
  By pre-emptively excluding unengaged contacts from your sends, you also reduce the need for contacts to unsubscribe from unwanted emails, or worse, mark them as spam. By removing unengaged contacts ahead of time you prevent unsubscribes and spam reports that would hurt your sending reputation in the future.
• Improve your sender reputation with inbox providers.
  Most major email service providers (like Google and Yahoo) track how recipients interact with emails from your domain (e.g., how many emails are marked as spam, how many are opened, etc.). ESPs use this information to determine whether to classify your messages as spam. Having lots of unengaged profiles on your list hurts your efforts to reach those that actually do want to receive your emails.
• Retain and engage customers.
  By learning when people start to disengage with your brand, you can know when to send targeted campaigns to re-engage them.
• Personalize content based on your best customers.
  By knowing that your list is full of real, active, and interested potential customers, you can start to personalize content and analyze data based on those most likely to encourage and promote your brand. 

Identify unengaged profiles by channel 

Identify your unengaged customers by creating a segment that captures profiles who are receiving your messages, but not opening or clicking them. This segment is a general recommendation. Depending on your audience and sending frequency, you can increase or decrease the time frames and message thresholds. For example, if you send emails daily or several times a week, consider using a 30-day range rather than 90-day in your unengaged email segment.

To create a segment: 

1. Navigate to Audience > Lists & segments. 
2. Click Create New > Create segment. 
3. Build a segment using the definitions outlined below for each channel: email, SMS, and push. 

Email

You can either manually create a segment of unengaged profiles, or automatically create a Never Engaged segment from the deliverability hub in Klaviyo.

To access the page, navigate to the Deliverability tab under Analytics in Klaviyo. Select Create segment on the action center for the Create a Never engaged segment recommendation. 

A segment will be automatically created with all of the following criteria (including any email integrations associated with your account).

• If someone can or cannot receive marketing > can receive email marketing 
   AND 
• What someone has done or not done > Received email is at 5 in the last 180 days 
  AND 
• What someone has done or not done > Opened email 0 times over all time
  AND 
• What someone has done or not done > Clicked email 0 times over all time
  AND 
• What someone has done or not done > Viewed Product 0 times over all time
  AND 
• What someone has done or not done > Placed Order 0 times over all time

After creating the segment on the deliverability hub, you'll see it on the Lists & Segments page in Klaviyo. It will be named "Never Engaged (Email)".

SMS

If someone can or cannot receive marketing > can receive SMS marketing 

AND 

Properties about someone > Created is at least 60 days ago 

AND

What someone has done or not done > Received SMS is greater than 5 in the last 60 days 

AND

What someone has done or not done > Clicked SMS 0 times in the last 60 days 

Push

If someone can or cannot receive marketing > can receive > mobile push marketing

AND

What someone has done (or not done) > Received push > at least 3 times > in the last 30 days

AND

What someone has done (or not done) > Opened push > zero times > in the last 30 days

Exclude unengaged contacts from specific sends

Klaviyo recommends excluding unengaged contacts from the majority of your campaigns. Since these contacts aren’t opening or clicking your messages, continuing to send to them can damage your deliverability. 

Make sure to exclude based on channel: for example, exclude your unengaged SMS segment from SMS sends, and exclude your unengaged email segment from email sends. 

In addition to excluding these contacts from campaigns, consider excluding them from your most high-volume flows as well, like browse abandonment. It’s fine to allow these contacts to enter flows for certain key touchpoints, like a re-engagement or abandoned cart flow. 

You may choose not to exclude unengaged contacts from certain high-priority campaigns, like new product drops or BFCM sends. 

Exclude unengaged contacts from campaigns 

1. Navigate to the Campaigns tab in Klaviyo. 
2. Select Create campaign. 
3. In the modal that appears, set the campaign’s name and choose a channel (i.e., email, SMS, or push). 
4. Click Save and continue. 
5. In the Recipients section, choose the list(s) or segment(s) you’d like to send to in the Send to section. 
6. In the Don’t send to (optional) section, select the unengaged segment for the channel you’re sending to.
   
7. Click Continue to content to create and send the campaign. 

Exclude unengaged contacts from a flow 

Flows are triggered by customer actions like subscribing to a list or abandoning a cart. These are key lifecycle touchpoints, and a great opportunity to re-engage a contact who has lapsed. In general, you should continue to send these flows to customers, even if they become unengaged.

However, if you have certain high-volume flows (e.g., flows that an unengaged contact might reasonably trigger multiple times in a month), you may consider excluding unengaged contacts from it to avoid damaging your sender reputation. 

To exclude contacts from high-volume flows: 

1. Navigate to the Flows tab in Klaviyo. 
2. Choose an existing flow or create a new one. 
3. If the flow sends via a single channel: 
1. Click the flow’s trigger to open the trigger menu. 
2. Next to Flow filters, click Add.
3. Select Add flow filter. 
4. Add a flow filter that matches your unengaged segment for that channel (see the email, SMS, and push sections above).
5. Click Save. 
4. If the flow sends using multiple channels:
1. Select the first message in your flow to open the message details panel. 
2. In the Settings section, select Add Filter. 
3. Add an additional filter that matches your unengaged segment for that channel (see the email, SMS, and push sections above).
4. Click Save. 
5. Repeat these steps for all other messages in the flow. 

Suppress unengaged contacts from all future sends

If you wish to give up sending to these contacts for all sends from your Klaviyo account moving forward then you will want to suppress the segment you created in bulk. To do this go to the Lists & Segments tab. Find the unengaged segment and click the three dots to the far right, and then click "Suppress current members" to suppress all of the unengaged profiles in bulk. Please see How to manage email suppressions in bulk or more details on the bulk suppression tool.

Outcome

After completing these steps, contacts who are not engaging with your messages via a particular channel will receive significantly fewer messages, which can improve your deliverability over time. 

These contacts may still receive occasional high-priority messages, like abandoned cart flows, re-engagement messages, or occasional important campaigns (like new product releases) if you choose not to exclude unengaged contacts from those sends. 

Additional resources 

• How to create a sunset flow 
• Understanding email deliverability
• How to create an engaged segment