Klaviyo sunset flow: how to cut unengaged subscribers without hurting revenue

What is a Klaviyo sunset flow?

It's a flow that triggers when someone has stopped engaging with your emails for a long stretch. It sends them a few emails asking, in effect, "still want to hear from us?" If they respond, they stay. If they don't, they get tagged and suppressed, so you stop emailing them.

Klaviyo's help page on sunset flows describes it as a flow designed to phase out people who are no longer engaging with your brand. That's the right way to think about it. It's cleanup, with a last chance built in.

Why run a Klaviyo sunset flow?

Three reasons, in the order I care about them.

Deliverability. Mailbox providers watch how people interact with your emails. If you keep sending to thousands of people who never engage, that drags down where your emails land for everyone else, including your best customers. If you're already seeing emails land in spam, read why Klaviyo emails go to spam.

Your Klaviyo bill. You're paying to keep people on your list who'll never buy again. I won't repeat the billing details here. That's all in why your Klaviyo bill went up.

Engaged sends earn more per person. At a fitness tech brand, a send to an engaged segment of 7,145 people earned $0.19 per person. A full-list blast to 49,475 people earned $0.04. Same brand, about 5x the revenue per person when the audience was people who actually engage.

There's a softer signal too. At a wellness brand, open rate went from 22% to 44% after tightening audiences. Opens are inflated, so treat that as directional, but it points the same way.

Why "opened" is a shaky way to define engaged

The classic way to define unengaged is "hasn't opened in X days." That's a problem now.

Apple Mail can register opens that nobody actually made. In pooled data from 4 consumable brands, Apple Mail auto-opens pushed open rates past 85% on some segments. Someone can look "engaged" for months without ever reading a thing.

The same data shows how loosely opens track money. Open rate tracked revenue at 0.32. Click rate tracked it at 0.65, about twice as closely. For one brand, more opens actually meant less money.

So lean on harder signals: clicks, site visits, product views and orders. Opens can stay in the mix, but they shouldn't be the thing that decides whether someone gets cut. For more on which numbers to trust, see email marketing benchmarks for CPG brands.

How to set up a Klaviyo sunset flow

Here's how I'd set it up. Some of this follows Klaviyo's own guidance, and some is my adjustment for the Apple Mail problem.

1. Build the segment. Klaviyo has a prebuilt "Sunset (Email)" segment in its Segment Library. It targets people who've been in your account at least 180 days, received at least five emails in the last 72 weeks, and haven't engaged. It's a fine starting point. I'd tighten it around clicks, site activity and orders instead of relying on opens.

2. Exclude the people you can't afford to lose. Take out anyone who's ordered recently, anyone inside their reorder window, and anyone who joined your list recently. A customer who bought two months ago and doesn't click emails is still a customer.

3. Trigger the flow off that segment. When someone enters the segment, they enter the flow.

4. Keep it short. Klaviyo suggests no more than three emails. Here's what I'd send:

1. "Still want to hear from us?" Plain, short, one obvious button to stay subscribed.
2. A real reason to come back. Your best seller, a new product, or an offer. Content warms people up, but somebody has to ask for the sale.
3. The last call. Tell them straight that you'll stop emailing them unless they click.

5. Let engagement pull people out. Anyone who engages during the flow should exit. Klaviyo's version uses opens or clicks for this. I'd make clicks, site visits and orders the signal that counts.

6. Tag, then suppress. At the end of the flow, use an Update Profile Property action to mark people as unengaged. Then build a segment of everyone with that property and suppress its members. Per Klaviyo's help page, you can't suppress profiles directly as a flow action, so you either repeat that step regularly or have a developer automate it through the API.

Before any of it goes live, click every link in all three emails. A broken "stay subscribed" button is the worst mistake you can make here.

How do you sunset subscribers without losing revenue?

This is the part founders worry about, and fair enough. Here's how I'd keep it safe.

• Look before you cut. Before you suppress anyone, check what that unengaged segment bought in the last few months. If it's close to nothing, cut with confidence. If it's not, your definition is too loose.
• Protect buyers. Never put recent customers or people inside their reorder window into sunset. That's what your reorder reminder and winback flows are for.
• Start conservative. Use a longer inactivity window at first. You can always tighten it once you see the results.
• Run it all the time, not once. A one-time purge fixes today's list. A flow keeps it clean every month.

Sunset vs winback: what's the difference?

Winback goes to customers who've stopped buying, and its job is to get them to order again. Sunset goes to subscribers who've stopped engaging at all, and its job is to clean your list.

They work in sequence. A customer who lapses gets winback first. If they never engage with any of it, they eventually land in sunset. A subscriber who never bought skips winback and goes straight to sunset when they go quiet.

Where these numbers come from

The open and click numbers are pooled from 4 consumable brands and 2,897 campaigns, a small sample, so treat them as directional. The $0.19 vs $0.04 comparison is from a single fitness tech brand, and the 22% to 44% open rate is from a single wellness brand.

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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