If your ecommerce store is suffering from low open rates, poor click rates, and high spam complaint numbers, blasting your entire list will only make things worse. When inbox providers see that half your recipients ignore you, they start routing your campaigns straight to junk.
The quickest way to repair your sender reputation is to restrict your campaign volume to your most active subscribers. Once mailbox providers trust you again, you can gradually expand your audience. In my books, this stepped engagement strategy is the most reliable way to recover deliverability in Klaviyo.
The Core 30-Day Engaged Segment
When open rates sink to 10% or 20%, you need an aggressive reset. You should immediately stop emailing unengaged profiles and restrict your regular campaigns to people who have interacted with your brand in the last 30 days.
To build this foundational segment in Klaviyo, include profiles that meet any of the following criteria:
- Opened an email at least once in the last 30 days
- Clicked an email at least once in the last 30 days
- Active on site at least once in the last 30 days
- Placed an order at least once in the last 30 days
- Subscribed to your list at least once in the last 30 days
Next, you must apply critical negative filters to the entire group. Ensure the profile is explicitly opted in to receive email marketing, and set a condition that they have bounced zero times in the last 30 days. That keeps invalid addresses and full inboxes out of your sending pool.
Why Recent Subscribers Need Special Treatment
One detail brand owners miss is how new sign-ups interact with engagement filters. If someone joined your list yesterday, they have not had enough time to rack up multiple opens or clicks. Yet they are some of the highest-intent people on your entire list.
Including the condition for subscribing in the last 30 days guarantees these fresh profiles receive your campaigns immediately. Alternatively, if your welcome flow takes a while to deliver, you can filter for profiles that have received at least one email over all time while keeping that 30-day recency window intact.
Keep in mind that Apple Mail Privacy Protection can report false opens on iOS devices. You should take individual open signals with a grain of salt and rely on the full mix of clicks, website activity, and recent purchases to measure genuine interest. Ignoring zero-party behaviour is a mistake.
Graduating to 60-Day and 90-Day Segments
You should not stay restricted to a 30-day window forever. As your open rates climb back up to 35% or 40% and your Klaviyo deliverability score moves into the good range, you can afford to widen the net.
To create a 60-day engaged segment, duplicate your 30-day setup and change the opens, clicks, site visits, and orders criteria to 60 days. However, one thing I like to do is leave the subscription filter set strictly to the last 30 days. If someone joined 55 days ago and has not opened a single message since, they are already slipping into unengaged territory and should not be grandfathered in.
Send to this 60-day group for two to four weeks. If your open rates hold steady above 35%, replicate the logic for a 90-day engaged segment. Deliverability improves in stages, not overnight.
Pushing Out to 120 and 180 Days
Once your domain reputation is solid, you can test 120-day or even 180-day windows. We have clients sending regularly to a 180-day engaged segment while consistently maintaining 2% to 3% click rates and strong inbox placement.
You can make these transitions as gradual as you like. If you run a high-volume store, you could expand your engagement window by five or ten days each week over several months. The key is monitoring your analytics after every send. If deliverability dips, pull back to the previous tier immediately.
Final Thoughts
Deliverability is not complicated, but it requires discipline. When open rates drop, shrink your sending pool to the 30-day engaged group, rebuild trust with inbox providers, and slowly scale outward to 60, 90, and 120 days. Protect your sender reputation first and the revenue will follow.
Fix Your Email Campaigns
If you want our team to audit your sender reputation and build an engagement framework that keeps you out of the spam folder, take a look at our email campaign services.
