Hey {{First Name}},
Once you know where deliverability stands, the next lever is who you’re emailing.
Segmentation doesn’t need to be fancy, but it does need to be intentional and backed by experience.
Here’s what we’ve learned after testing this across millions of emails sent in 2024 and 2025:
What doesn’t work (and often hurts deliverability)
❌ Using site engagement as “email engagement”
Someone visiting your site doesn’t mean they want your emails.
Inbox providers care about:
Opens
Clicks
Replies
Not page views. Not purchases.
❌ Sending to everyone “just in case”
Blasting your full list:
Lowers engagement
Increases unsubscribes
Can add you to blacklists if you have spam trap emails on your list
Trains inboxes to trust you less
This is one of the most common mistakes we see and the fastest way to destroy your email deliverability.
❌ Emailing “Never Subscribed” profiles
In Klaviyo, some profiles can receive emails without ever explicitly subscribing.
Emailing these people increases:
Spam complaints
Unsubscribes
Negative signals
This one is easy to miss.
What actually works when it comes to segmentation
✅ Simple engaged segments by days
Keep it simple: Prioritize recent EMAIL engagement.
In the general “Engaged profiles“ segment below, you see we only want to include profiles who can receive email marketing and HAVE opened or clicked in the last X days.
✅ Layer in engagement conditions
If you’re having deliverability issues and need to send to your MOST engaged profiles, you can add the following filters to shrink your segment size and drive higher engagement:
Can receive email marketing because person “Subscribed”
Has opened AND clicked in the last X days
You can also create an “Engaged customers“ segment to send to profiles lowest in your funnel— someone who has PURCHASED— by creating the following segment:
Essentially: Engaged profiles + has purchased.
✅ Exclude bounced profiles
Every platform is different, but in Klaviyo, a profile has to bounce SEVEN times before it’s suppressed. Avoid the bounces and exclude the segment below from most all campaigns.
✅ Expand the segment size slowly
You typically want to start with engaged 14-day segments, then work your way slowly to 30, 45, 60, 90, and all the way out to 365-day engaged segments.
Pro-tip: once you’re sending to wider segments, stack all (e.g. Engaged profiles 30 days, Engaged profiles 60 days, Engaged profiles 90 days, and so on), and in Klaviyo you can see if you’re driving incremental revenue from the wider segments inside the campaign performance, most of the time it’s negligable and you’d be better off sticking to engaged 30 and 60 day segments.
Remember: Segmentation isn’t about list size.
It’s about protecting engagement.
Simple takeaway
If someone hasn’t engaged recently, don’t treat them like your best subscribers.
Next email, I’ll explain how engagement really affects deliverability — and why low clicks don’t always mean trouble.
– Anthony