The value of a Klaviyo profile
Profiles are the heart of Klaviyo; they power your digital marketing strategy. Every customer profile contains information that you can use to curate a personalized omnichannel experience for that specific customer. Together, your profiles constitute your virtual customer knowledge base.
Since profiles are instrumental to your marketing efforts, Klaviyo pricing is based on both active profiles and sends. That said, it’s important to note that you may have active profiles in your account who aren’t actually engaging with your brand; they’re not opening your marketing messages, visiting your site, or purchasing from you. These profiles are sitting in your account, costing you money while bringing in no revenue in return.
Don’t worry; we’ll cover some strategies you can use to ensure you’re only paying for a list of truly engaged, active profiles that value your brand.
Make the most out of the profiles in your Klaviyo account
In the video below, we’ll walk through the difference between active and unreachable profiles. Then, we’ll provide recommendations for suppressing profiles to protect your marketing spend and to prioritize truly engaged subscribers who will drive revenue for your business.
Bear in mind that once a profile has been manually suppressed, if that same profile becomes unsuppressed, it cannot be manually suppressed again within 90 days. This rule is inactive for the first 30 days after a new account is created. Learn more about bulk suppressions and unsuppressions.
Suppressing inactivity and never engaged segments
In the video above, we covered two key segments you should create and suppress to protect your billing and deliverability. Use the dropdowns below to learn how you can create each segment in Klaviyo, and how you can suppress them using the bulk suppression tool.
Create and suppress an inactivity segment
An inactivity segment consists of profiles who haven’t engaged with your brand in any capacity in a long time frame, and are no longer generating any revenue for your business. These profiles have also existed for over 6 months. It’s recommended to create and suppress this segment to reduce the number of your billable profiles, without risking any future potential revenue.
Klaviyo empowers you to build this segment in just a few clicks, directly from the Profiles tab. Head over to Profiles on the left-hand navigation menu, and then click View suppressed profiles. Then, click on Create Inactivity Segment.
If you were to build this segment from scratch, head over to the List & segments tab and create a new segment. Use the following conditions to build out the inactivity segment in the segment builder:
Once created, you can suppress this segment by returning to the List & segments tab and clicking on the three dots on the right of your inactivity segment. Then, click Suppress current members.
Create and suppress a never engaged segment
A never engaged segment consists of profiles who have been around for 6 months, but have never engaged with your marketing. Continuing to send marketing messages to these profiles poses a threat to your sender reputation, and can harm your deliverability down the line.
By creating and suppressing this segment, you can help improve any deliverability issues and ensure you’re sending to engaged contacts only.
Klaviyo empowers you to build this segment in 1 click, directly from the Deliverability hub.
If you were to build this segment from scratch, head over to the List & segments tab and create a new segment. Use the following conditions to build out the never engaged segment in the segment builder:
Effective re-engagement strategies
As a reminder, it’s more costly for your brand to acquire new subscribers than to retain existing ones. Before your profiles meet the criteria for the inactive segment or never engaged segment, you can proactively identify lapsing customers and target them with re-engagement strategies.
Re-engagement campaign
Re-engagement campaigns can be an effective tactic for reeling lapsing customers back in and reminding them of your brand value. You can build this campaign from scratch, or search the template library for re-engagement templates you can use.
Audience
Create two segments of lapsing subscribers: unengaged purchasers and unengaged non-purchasers. Both groups of people have demonstrated very low engagement, but are differentiated by their purchase history. After sending the campaign, you can view metrics for each segment to see which group performed better.
Content
Craft a personalized message, using details such as the recipient’s first name. Consider showcasing newer products that these subscribers may have missed while they’ve been unengaged, and adding an incentive to entice them to check out your site and make a purchase. Keep the message simple, and mostly text-based.
Winback flow
Winback flows enable you to automatically message subscribers who’ve made a purchase from you in the past, but haven’t made an additional purchase after a long period of time. This period of inactivity signals that subscribers who enter this flow are at risk of totally disengaging from your brand. To set this up, head to the flow library and find the pre-built Customer winback flow template.
Audience
Set the trigger for this flow as Placed Order, and then add a wait time that resembles the length of your business’s typical customer buying cycle. Any subscribers who’ve made a purchase from you, and then haven’t made a subsequent purchase within your typical buying cycle, will receive your winback flow messages.
Content
Craft messages that are personal, deliver a timely incentive, and highlight new popular products that these customers may not be familiar with. Consider adding conditional splits for the customer's preferred channel, and send them your message via email, text message or push. It’s recommended to have 1-3 messages in your winback flow.
Sunset flow
Sunset flows are your last effort to bring lapsing subscribers back before officially suppressing them. Once you’ve officially deemed someone as unengaged, you can automatically send these subscribers a final message before saying an official goodbye. To set this up, head to the flow library and find the prebuilt Sunset unengaged subscribers flow template.
Audience
Your sunset flow is a segment-triggered flow, meaning someone enters the flow as soon as they meet the criteria for a given segment or list. Create a sunset segment that makes the most sense for your business.
Content
Your sunset flow messages should acknowledge the recipient’s lack of activity and include personal details, such as their first name. You can also include a final incentive to encourage engagement. Make sure to clearly present your unsubscribe and manage preference links as well. It’s recommended to include no more than 3 messages in this flow. Your flow should conclude with an Update profile property flow action, so you can automatically tag subscribers as unengaged if they don’t interact with your flow messages.
Active profile management vs. list cleaning
You may have heard of the following processes in relation to your profiles: active profile management, and list cleaning. What’s the difference between these 2 processes? How do they come into play with what we’ve covered in this guide?
These 2 processes are similar in that they both help ensure you’re prioritizing your engaged, active profiles. We’ve actually touched on aspects of both throughout this guide, when we covered suppressing your inactive segment and your never engaged segment. However, let’s dive into the terminology to provide more context, and cover how the strategies we’ve outlined thus far fit into these 2 processes.
- Active profile management
Active profile management is the profile process you use for the end goal of driving down billing costs and protecting your marketing spend. When you perform active profile management, you’re suppressing your inactive segment of profiles who are no longer generating revenue for your brand. - List cleaning
List cleaning is the profile process you use for the end goal of protecting and repairing your deliverability. List cleaning consists of both suppressing never engaged contacts, and excluding unengaged contacts from the majority of your campaign sends.
You should perform both active profile management and list cleaning to prioritize a healthy, engaged subscriber list.
Do note that the frequency of these two processes and the exact segment criteria may differ depending on your brand and business model. For example, take a retail brand that has products that would appeal to all age ranges and multiple interests: they have kids and adult sizing, as well as fashion streetwear apparel, athletic apparel, and accessories. Compare that business to a retail brand that specifically sells only kids shoes. With a wider product offering and target consumer, you may have more people unengaging and coming back in fluctuating periods, so you may be wary of suppressing profiles frequently. With a limited product offering and narrower target consumer, suppressing them is safer since it’s unlikely they’ll come back.
You should adapt these processes how they make the most sense for your business.