What’s killing your deliverability (and how to fix it)
What’s in every Klaviyo account that causes you a headache? No, that’s not a Christmas cracker joke missing the punchline, but here it is: inactive profiles. Contacts who signed up months or years ago, never engaged, and are still sitting on your list receiving every email you send. Not opening. Not clicking. Just… silently doing real damage to your deliverability.
Why inactive profiles matter
Email service providers - Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and friends - use engagement signals to decide where your emails land. If a large proportion of your sends are going to people who consistently ignore them, those providers start treating your emails as less trustworthy. Over time, more of your emails go to spam (or worse, not delivered at all). Even for the engaged contacts who actually want to hear from you. The stuff of nightmares!
This is why deliverability isn't just technical, it’s a list management problem. And it compounds the longer it's ignored.
What counts as inactive?
There's no universal definition, and it depends on your send frequency and the nature of your business. But as a working rule, a contact who hasn't opened or clicked anything in the past 90 to 180 days, and shows no purchase or visit activity, is worth treating as inactive. In Klaviyo, you can build this segment precisely and exclude it from your main sends.
The fix isn't just deleting everyone
A knee-jerk response is to purge inactive contacts entirely. Sometimes that's the right call (especially if you’ve crept into the next tier) but it's not always, particularly if those contacts have purchase history or represent potential value. A proper approach involves a re-engagement sequence first: a small number of emails specifically designed to prompt a response, with a clear exit if they don't. Those who don't re-engage get suppressed rather than deleted, preserving the data while protecting your deliverability.
Alongside this, keeping an eye on your IP health and sender reputation in Klaviyo is important maintenance that often gets skipped. It's not glamorous, but it's foundational, because none of your other email work matters if the emails aren't landing in the inbox. I normally pop a reminder in my calendar to have a look first thing on a Monday morning, or the morning after a big send.
If you're not sure what your inactive profile situation looks like, or whether your deliverability is where it should be, get in touch and I'll take a look.
