Understanding compliant lists

You will learn

Learn about Klaviyo's regulations around the types of lists allowed to be uploaded to the platform. Before uploading a list, consider whether the list has engaged users and complies with our Terms of Service.

Terms of service regulations

In order to comply with Klaviyo’s Terms of Service, you can only upload lists of people who have signed up on your website or have otherwise opted-in to receive marketing emails from you. This means:

• No third-party lists
• No prospecting lists
• No purchased lists or lists that you scraped from websites
• No Chambers of Commerce lists, etc.

Klaviyo only supports permission-based sending. 

What counts as permission

What counts as permission varies both by country and channel. 

With Klaviyo, you always need express consent for SMS marketing, meaning someone directly told you that they want to receive marketing messages from you via text.

Express consent is also preferred for email, and it is required in a few jurisdictions. In some cases, though, you can email someone with implied consent. 

Learn about the difference between express and implied consent. 

Types of lists

If you are planning to import a list that is not your main email list, consider the following questions:

• Did someone subscribe to this list by filling out a signup form online or at an event?
• Is this list a subset of your main email list? For example, email subscribers who live in Boston or are female subscribers?
• Does this list contain email subscribers grouped because of something they’ve done or not done? For example, a list of customers that have all purchased a specific product?

If your list contains opted-in subscribers who have signed up directly to receive marketing emails from you, this is a list you’ll want to import into Klaviyo.

If your list contains a subset of your email subscribers grouped because of a specific quality or something they’ve done or not done, do not upload these lists; instead, use Klaviyo's dynamic segments.

Segments are defined by a set of conditions. This means they grow as new people meet the conditions and shrink as people no longer meet them; whereas lists are static. If you create a list of contacts that represents a subset of another list, you will have to maintain this yourself as new people meet the subset's conditions. This means you will manually have to add and remove contacts. If you replace such lists with dynamic segments, Klaviyo will automatically keep the segment up-to-date based on the definition you establish.

Additional resources

• Getting started with segments
• Understanding the difference between lists and segments
• Email list hygiene: Best practices for a clean subscriber list