Klaviyo Emails Going to Spam? 7 Klaviyo Deliverability Tips to Try
If you use Klaviyo for eCommerce email marketing, when was the last time you checked in on your email deliverability? This key part of any email marketing strategy is often held up by messages going to spam, especially for Klaviyo users.
When your emails go to spam, not only are you missing out on potential revenue, you could put your future campaigns in jeopardy, too, effectively halting your outreach efforts. Here we’ll go over email deliverability, common errors that hinder emails from arriving, and seven ways to improve your eCommerce email deliverability.
What is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability is measured as a percentage of all emails accepted by the recipient’s internet service provider (ISPs). Email service providers (ESPs) may feature tabbed inboxes, allowing the user to automatically sort incoming mail, such as primary, promotions, and spam.
Good deliverability means the emails land in the primary inbox, where it’s most likely to be viewed and opened. Engagement, like opens, clicks, conversions, and forwards also plays a role in overall deliverability.
The Email Deliverability Process
When you hit send on an email, it goes through the outbound mail server. The server checks the mail exchange (MX) record and then sends the message to the internet. An inbound mail server receives the email and then authenticates the message through three layers of authentication: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-Based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC). This step tells an ISP if the sender, you, is who they say they are.
The final step is with the ISP, where the provider decides where to send the email. Common folders are inbox, spam, blocked, or a custom user-set filter.
But your emails could be dropped at any point in the delivery process. Four common reasons are:
1. Suppressed Emails Stay In Your Outbox
If a subscriber takes back their consent or unsubscribes, the ESP suppresses any emails you send to the address. You’ll usually see these in your outbox.
2. Bounced Emails Don’t Arrive
While most emails leave your outbox, some bounce and don’t arrive at the intended subscriber. Hard bounces happen when the email address is invalid, such as entering the wrong address at sign-up. Soft bounces happen when email servers are offline, an inbox is full, or you’ve sent too many emails according to the ESP’s policy which limits incoming messages.
3. Subscriber’s Spam Filter Catches Your Emails
This happens if the recipient marked your sending address as spam, you have a low email deliverability reputation, and/or the subject line text or email content triggers a spam warning from the ESP.
4. Your Email Isn’t Opened
If enough subscribers on your list don’t open the emails, it could trigger a flag within the ESPs and cause subsequent messages to drop from the process.
Common Email Deliverability Errors in Klaviyo
Suppressed Emails
If an email address is suppressed legally, you can’t use the address for further eCommerce email marketing. An address can be automatically suppressed when:
The user unsubscribes;
The user marked an email as spam;
The email hard bounced;
The email soft bounced more than seven times in a row;
The email address was added manually; and/or
A previous ESP suppressed the user.
If a Klaviyo user enables the global unsubscribe feature, a recipient is automatically suppressed when they unsubscribe from any email. On the backend of Klaviyo, you can view individual profiles to see if any are suppressed with one of the following:
Green checkmark: Profile consented to receive emails.
Red X: Profile suppressed for receiving emails.
No symbol: Profile neither consented nor opted out; use caution when emailing.
Bounced Emails
Bounces don’t necessarily impact deliverability right away, but it’s important to keep an eye on your soft and hard bounce rates. You have no control over a full inbox or a down server, but you can control the size of outgoing emails.
Large emails are common causes of a soft bounce. Make sure your images, videos, GIFs, or other dynamic media are optimized for an email to reduce the message size.
Hard bounces should be addressed and cleaned up as soon as possible before they affect the deliverability rate. A high rate causes ESPs to believe you’re a fraudulent sender and block incoming emails from your address.
Spam Filtered Emails
Landing in the spam folder is caused by a combination of:
Emailing a person before they’ve opted in or given explicit permission to contact them;
The IP address was used for spamming in the past;
People previously reported your emails as spam;
You have a low open rate which makes ESPs think your emails are spammy;
The email subject line or content uses spam trigger words; and/or
You’re using an outdated and messy email list.
Unopened Emails
Sometimes, a few subscribers are too busy to open your emails. But if they continue not to open and interact, it’s time to remove them from your list.
What Factors Impact Deliverability in Klaviyo?
Klaviyo, like most ESPs, is affected by a number of factors that may impact the deliverability of your emails. Factors we’ll discuss and what you can do to improve them are:
Email Engagement
From Address
Sender Reputation
Trigger Terms
Email List Cleaning
List Segmentation
Double Opt-In
Subject Lines
Body Content
Email Engagement
Simply, it’s how your subscribers engage — or not — with the emails you send. Open and click rates are two standard measurements of engagement, but they don’t give you the full picture. Klaviyo lets users create engagement reports that break down a list or segment by how often recipients open their emails.
This is an example chart from a 30-day period for recipient segments.
Very engaged: Subscribers with a 50% or higher open rate.
Somewhat engaged: Subscribers with a 20% to 50% open rate.
Barely engaged: Subscribers with an open rate greater than zero but less than 20%.
Not engaged: Subscribers who haven’t opened any emails in the stated time frame.
Received no emails: Subscribers who are likely suppressed or were recently added to a list or segment.
How to Improve Email Engagement in Klaviyo
Start by removing all suppressed email addresses from your segments and lists — they’re not worth the risk of violating CAN-SPAM and ESPs policies. Then, put on your cleaning gloves and start working through lists by removing subscribers who’ve never opened your emails.
Consider developing a re-engagement campaign for the barely engaged subscribers. Include a survey for what they’re most interested in, and if possible, give them the option to update their email frequency.
From Address
The name in your from address, whether it’s a real person at your eCommerce business or the business name, does affect deliverability.
Source: Internal
The name on the preview and sender address in this email are consistent — consistency is one way to avoid the spam button from subscribers as they’ll begin to expect emails from the same name and from the address.
But, if your eCommerce company uses a shared sending domain or shared IP address, these separate your emails from others. Marketing and transactional emails can have different addresses, but it’s a good idea to keep the sending domain the same.
Sender Reputation
Even if they won’t openly admit it, everyone worries about their reputation at one time or another. For email marketing, your sender's reputation can be the difference between making a sale or landing in timeout with deliverability issues.
Your sender reputation is a score given to your business or email by an ISP. It’s a major part of deliverability and is easy to understand. A higher reputation score means you’re more likely to land inboxes on their network than a lower score. While each ISP can set its own scoring criteria, common factors include:
How many emails are sent from your business;
How many of your emails are marked as spam by recipients;
Frequency of emails landing in the ISP’s spam trap;
Your business’ inclusion on blacklists;
Amount of bounces due to unknown users or other reasons;
Your open, reply to, forward rates plus deletion rates and click-through rates; and
Number of unsubscribes.
How to Improve Sender Reputation
If your sender reputation has taken a hit or two, don’t panic — here are a handful of easy-to-implement steps to regain a higher score.
Stop any third-party marketing, whether it’s done through an ESP, Klaviyo, or a marketing group.
Disable low engagement flows in Klaviyo, like re-engagement, sunset, and win-backs.
Identify the least engaged subscribers and remove them from segments and lists.
Set up a dedicated sending domain.
Monitor your engagement rates and overall deliverability, and make changes as needed.
Trigger Terms
Trigger terms are words flagged by ESPs because they’ve been deemed fraudulent and/or malicious. Basically, these words overpromise and under-deliver in email messaging and are often used in phishing and other scams.
Common Trigger Terms to Avoid
For eCommerce businesses, if you use these words — compiled by HubSpot — without context and other email marketing best practices, your emails could land in spam folders.[1]
As seen on
Buy
Buy direct
Buying judgments
Clearance
Order
Order status
Orders shipped by shopper
Email List Cleaning
This cleaning is regularly updating a contact or subscriber list by removing suppressed or outdated addresses. A clean list helps improve eCommerce email deliverability and usually yields higher engagement rates.
For people who use Kajabi with Klaviyo, Kajabi recently introduced automated list hygiene to make list cleaning a breeze. This feature cleans up hard bounces, misformatted addresses, or addresses that were unsubscribed through an ESP.
How to Clean an Email List in Klaviyo
Klaviyo’s dashboard helps you give an email list a quick dusting or a full-blown spring clean. If you’re looking for a way to get started, here are four tips for cleaning your email lists and helping deliverability.
Identify hard bounce, invalid, and outdated email addresses and add them to the suppression list.
Set up an automatic suppression for any address with more than seven soft bounces in a row.
Identify unengaged addresses and set a baseline for what’s unengaged and what can stay on the list.
Make it easy for your subscribers to unsubscribe.
List Segmentation
List segments are groups of subscribers put together through pre-determined and dynamic conditions. What the conditions are is up to you, as is the number of segments you can set up. Examples of eCommerce segments include new product purchases, inactive subscribers, or customers who’ve spent a certain amount of money.
Using segments is a great way to improve deliverability in Klaviyo, as these are defined subscribers who are more likely to open and engage with your emails.
How to Segment Your Email List in Klaviyo
To set up a segment in Klaviyo, find the Lists & Segments tab under your account. Click Create List/Segment, then click Segment. The segment builder lets you add a range of conditions and specifications for what kind of subscriber is in the segment. Click Create Segment to save your new segment.
Double Opt-In
This process requires a subscriber to confirm their subscription through a separate email. Anyone who doesn’t complete the confirmation won’t be added to the subscriber list. Double opt-in reduces invalid or mistyped email addresses because of the second step.
Using this method helps increase email deliverability and sender reputation as it significantly reduces bots and spam traps from signing up.
Klaviyo users can change between single and double opt-in for individual contact lists. To change the process, select the list you want to change, then click Settings. You’ll see two radio buttons for each option — select one, then click Update List Settings.
Subject Lines
This simple line of text is often the first thing someone sees when they open an email inbox. An estimated 333.2 billion emails were sent and received in 2022.[1] The subject line can easily be the reason a subscriber opens your eCommerce email, ignores and continues scrolling, or deletes without opening.
The worst case scenario is the reader marking the message as spam because their spidey senses said the message was spam and not worth their time.
Not using actionable, engaging, inquisitive, or any type of subject line that piques the reader’s attention to open could be a missed sale — and a ding toward email deliverability.
Write Better Subject Lines for Deliverability
Keep the total character count low, but make sure the text makes sense.
Focus on value, not a gimmick.
Make the subject actionable or give a clear command to the reader.
Point out a video or other dynamic content in the email body.
Make a personal connection to the subscriber.
Body Content
Even if you’re over the moon excited about the next product launch, keep your body content relevant and to the point. What’s in the main section of the email is a factor toward email deliverability.
Double-check your message for spammy words, multiple calls to action, and broken links. Test your email on several different screen sizes and devices, such as an iPhone and an Android smartphone, for responsiveness and accessibility.
How to Write a Better Email for Deliverability
Personalization: People want value from a product or service, but they also want to easily picture their life with it.
Benefits, not features: Make sure the copy focuses on the benefits instead of features which turns the focus back on your eCommerce company.
Get to the point: Nobody has time to read a full novel each day, even if they wish they could.
Be relevant: Related to personalization, keep the body content relevant to the subject line.
Use a single CTA: The call-to-action should stand alone and be simple but actionable.
How to Track and Monitor Your Email Deliverability
Talk about how readers can check their email deliverability and monitor their performance over time. What metrics should they look at when monitoring their deliverability? What are good metrics/goal metrics?
Along with monitoring your set KPIs for your eCommerce email marketing, you should be monitoring these metrics related to email deliverability:
Unique open rates;
Unique click rates;
Bounce rates;
Spam complaint rates; and
Unsubscribe rates.
Klaviyo considers the following metrics to be proficient or great. If your numbers fall below any of these, use the information as a kickstart to improve.
How to check email deliverability in Klaviyo?
Use campaign reporting: Klaviyo lets you track bounces, clicks, opens, and spam reports in Campaign Trend Report.
Benchmarking: Review and compare your specific data to Klaviyo benchmarks, industry trends, and peer groups.
Campaign table: This table displays your value for different performance indicators and provides recommendations to improve deliverability.
Still Struggling with Klaviyo Emails Going to Spam?
If you’ve made changes to the emails you’re sending out with Klaviyo, but are still fighting spam filters, we’re here to help. The Winbox offers email audits and one-on-one consultation to help you bypass the spam folders and get in front of your subscribers. Contact us today to begin.
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