Klaviyo emails going to spam? How I'd find the cause

First: is it spam, or is your tracking broken?

Before you start changing DNS records, rule this out.

Across my portfolio, about 20 sends showed opens and revenue but zero clicks. That isn't a spam problem. A send that real people engaged with and bought from should show at least some clicks. It meant click tracking was broken.

Here's how to tell the difference:

• Spam usually looks like: opens dropping across many sends at once, clicks dropping with them, and the drop hitting one inbox provider (like Gmail) harder than others.
• Broken tracking usually looks like: zero clicks on a send that still shows opens or revenue, or clicks that don't match what you see in Shopify.

And there's a third pattern: clicks with no sales. A fitness gear brand sent a restock email that got a 0.40% click rate, double its other sends, and made $0. That's not spam either. Something between the click and the checkout broke. Click every link before you hit send.

What do Gmail and Yahoo require now?

Both have published rules for senders. Here's what I confirmed on their pages.

Gmail (Google's email sender guidelines):

• All senders need SPF or DKIM, valid forward and reverse DNS, and TLS, and should keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%.
• Senders of 5,000 or more messages a day to personal Gmail accounts need both SPF and DKIM, plus DMARC. The DMARC policy can be set to none.
• For those bulk senders, the From domain has to align with the SPF or DKIM domain.
• Marketing and subscribed messages need one-click unsubscribe and a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the body.
• Google's guidance is to keep the spam rate below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching 0.30% or higher.

Yahoo (Sender Best Practices):

• Bulk senders should set up both SPF and DKIM, and publish a valid DMARC policy of at least p=none.
• The From domain needs to align with either the SPF or DKIM domain.
• Include a working one-click unsubscribe and a visible unsubscribe link in the body.
• Honor unsubscribes within 2 days.
• Keep your spam rate below 0.3%.

If you're a growing Shopify brand on Klaviyo, assume these apply to you.

Why are my Klaviyo emails going to spam? The triage

Work through these in order. The early ones are quick to check and rule out a lot.

1. Authentication

Start here because it's a yes-or-no check.

Klaviyo's own guidance is to send from a branded sending domain, which it describes as a sending domain where the root domain matches your website's domain. Klaviyo says your sending domain "sets the foundation for your deliverability." If you're still sending from a shared default domain, fix this first.

Then confirm SPF, DKIM and DMARC are all in place and passing. Klaviyo Academy explains how a branded sending domain supports SPF and DKIM, and says Klaviyo starts DMARC at a monitoring-only setting, which lines up with the p=none minimum Gmail and Yahoo accept.

2. List hygiene

Look at where your list came from. Old imports, contest entries, wholesale contacts that never opted in, and anything you didn't collect yourself are the usual trouble spots.

Then look at bounces. If a chunk of your list bounces on every send, that's a signal to inbox providers that you're not keeping your list clean.

3. Sending to people who stopped engaging

When I take over an account from a cheap freelancer, this is a common one: campaigns go to everyone, every time, with no segments. That includes people who haven't clicked in a year.

Inbox providers watch how people react to your mail. When a big share of a send gets ignored or marked as spam, it hurts where the next send lands.

The fix is to send campaigns to engaged segments and run a sunset flow for people who've gone quiet. I break down how to set up a Klaviyo sunset flow separately, and email segmentation for ecommerce covers how to build the segments.

It pays, too. One fitness tech brand sent to an engaged segment of 7,145 people and earned $0.19 per person. A full-list blast to 49,475 earned $0.04.

4. Sudden volume spikes

Going from a few thousand emails a week to your whole list every day is a pattern inbox providers notice. It happens most around big moments like Black Friday, launches, or the first send after months of silence.

If you need to send more, ramp up over a few weeks and lead with your most engaged people. Save the bigger sends for after your engaged sends are landing well.

5. Content

Content is the last thing I'd check, but it still matters.

Start with the basics I use on every email: 600px wide, one main CTA destination, and a trust bar. Click every link before you send. Avoid fake "Re:" or "Fwd:" subject lines. They might get an open, but they won't earn trust.

How I'd keep you out of spam going forward

Here's how I'd run it once the fire's out:

• Send campaigns to engaged segments by default. Full-list sends become the exception, not the habit.
• Run a sunset flow. Give quiet subscribers a last chance, then stop mailing them.
• Judge every send by clicks. Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens, so open rate won't warn you early. In our 4-brand data, Apple's auto-opens pushed some segments past 85%. Clicks are the honest signal.
• Watch for zero-click sends. If a send shows opens or revenue with no clicks, check tracking before anything else.
• Check your spam rate. Google points senders to Postmaster Tools for this. Keep it under 0.10% where you can.

For the numbers I use to judge whether an account is healthy, see our CPG email marketing benchmarks.

Where these numbers come from

The 85% open rate figure comes from a pooled sample of 4 consumable brands (2,897 campaigns), so treat it as directional. The other numbers come from individual client accounts, labeled with a descriptor instead of a name. Gmail and Yahoo requirements come from their own published pages, linked below.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

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