Most brands handle unengaged subscribers one of two ways.

They either keep emailing them like nothing's wrong, quietly tanking their deliverability in the process. Or they suppress them in a panic after reading something about list hygiene and feel vaguely guilty about it for a week.

There's a third option that most people skip entirely. And it works better than both.

In Klaviyo, create a segment called "Email Winback X Days."

The criteria is simple.

Anyone who has engaged with your emails at some point over their entire history with you, but has not opened or clicked anything in the last X days (exact days vary by brand)

These are not dead subscribers.

These are people who cared enough to engage at some point, then slowly drifted.

Maybe life got busy. Maybe your emails blended into the noise. Maybe they just stopped noticing you were there.

That's a very different person from someone who never engaged at all. And they deserve a different approach.

Once the segment is built, you set a flow to trigger whenever a new profile enters it.

This is the part most brands miss. They think about winbacks as a one-time campaign they send to a cold list twice a year. This turns it into an always-on system that catches people the moment they start going quiet, not six months after you've already lost them.

When someone enters the "Email Winback X Days" segment, the flow starts. And the job of that flow is straightforward. Remind them why they subscribed in the first place.

This isn't a "we miss you" email with a sad puppy gif.

The flow should walk them through the things a genuinely interested new subscriber would want to know. Who you are. What problem your product actually solves.

Why it works. What real customers have experienced.

And if it makes sense for your brand, a discount or incentive toward the end to give them a concrete reason to come back now rather than later.

Think of it less like a re-engagement campaign and more like a second onboarding. You're not begging them to stay.

You're giving them a reason to remember why they showed up in the first place.

The reason this works as a flow rather than a campaign is timing.

When you run a winback campaign to your whole unengaged list twice a year, you're catching people at every different stage of disengagement simultaneously.

Someone who went quiet three weeks ago gets the same email as someone who hasn't opened anything in eleven months.

That's a blunt instrument.

This segment catches people at exactly thirty days of inactivity, every single time, automatically. The outreach is relevant to where they actually are.

And because it runs in the background without you touching it, your main campaign sends stay clean and go to people who are actually engaged.

Your deliverability stays healthy. Your engaged list stays protected. And a meaningful percentage of the people who were quietly drifting come back before they're gone for good.

We've seen this pull anywhere from 10 to 18 percent of profiles back into active engagement depending on the brand, the offer, and how strong the product story is in the flow.

That's not a number you get from suppressing and moving on.

Once the flow is live, add a tag to anyone who goes through the full sequence without engaging to add them to your sunsetting flow.

Don't keep emailing them with your regular campaigns hoping something eventually sticks.

They've had five chances and a discount. If they're still not moving, let them go.

The goal isn't to keep everyone on your list. The goal is to keep everyone worth keeping, and give the ones on the fence a real reason to come back before you make that call.

Thats the difference between a healthy list and a big one.

If you want help building this segment and flow inside your Klaviyo account, reply with the word ENGAGE and I'll walk you through exactly how I'd set it up for your brand or feel free to book a call below and I’ll walk you through how to do this exact strategy for your brand:

https://calendly.com/transparentdigital/quick-chat

— Anthony