Building the unengaged sunset segment
Paying Klaviyo for contacts who never open your emails is dead weight on your marketing budget. Before you can clean up your list, you need a precise definition of who is truly unengaged so you do not accidentally suppress active buyers or fresh subscribers.
In my books, an unengaged subscriber must meet three specific criteria. First, what somebody has or has not done: received email is at least 10 over all time. This ensures new sign-ups who have not had a fair chance to interact are not caught in the net. Second, opened email is zero times in the last 90 days. Third, placed order is zero times over all time to protect non-opening repeat customers. In most accounts, this segment surfaces dozens or hundreds of dormant profiles immediately.
Hoarding unengaged contacts does not build value. It just inflates your tier.
Running the two plain text sunset campaigns
Once your segment is built, give those contacts two final opportunities to re-engage before you cut them off. We send two plain text campaigns spaced out over several days, stripped of all logos, imagery, and heavy layout code.
For the first campaign, name it clearly (such as Sunset Email 1) and target your unengaged segment. Crucially, turn off Smart Sending so everyone in the segment receives it. Use a direct, provocative subject line like "Should we stop contacting you?" and set the sender name to a real person, such as the founder.
Clone this email to build your second campaign and schedule it to go out roughly 3 days later. When scheduling, make sure you tick the option to determine recipients at send time. If someone opens or clicks the first email, they leave the unengaged segment immediately. Failing to tick that box means they will receive the follow-up regardless.
Why plain text and clear opt-outs matter
Plain text emails work because they look and feel like a personal note from an individual inbox. When a subscriber has ignored marketing graphics for 90 days, a simple message asking if they still want to hear from you cuts through the noise.
Make sure your copy includes an explicit unsubscribe link built with dynamic tag syntax. If they click to leave, let them go. If they click any other link to confirm interest, Klaviyo registers that engagement and automatically shifts them out of the sunset segment.
Wait 24 hours after your second campaign sends. Anyone still sitting in the sunset segment should be selected and suppressed immediately. You gave them two chances, they passed, and you should no longer pay for them.
Automating the process with a sunset flow
Running manual campaigns every month is tedious. The better approach is to turn this entire logic into an automated sunset flow that runs silently in the background.
Create a new flow triggered whenever a profile joins your unengaged segment. Recreate your two plain text campaigns as flow emails separated by a 3-day time delay. Add profile filters to the flow: opened email zero times since starting this flow, clicked email zero times since starting this flow, and placed order zero times since starting this flow.
If a subscriber engages with email one, the flow filters boot them out instantly. That keeps your automation clean and ensures only truly inactive profiles reach the end.
Tagging profiles and batch suppression
Klaviyo does not automatically suppress profiles at the end of a flow, so you need a mechanism to flag them for batch removal. At the end of the sunset flow, add a 24-hour delay followed by an Update Profile Property step.
Set a custom profile property such as "suppress" or use a unique status tag like "suppressed". Next, build a dynamic segment of all profiles where that property equals "suppressed". Once a month, log in, open that segment, and hit suppress. It takes roughly 30 seconds and keeps your billing tier as low as possible.
Final Thoughts
Trimming your list is not just about saving money on your monthly Klaviyo invoice, though cutting your bill is an immediate win. It also protects your sender reputation and keeps your deliverability healthy by ensuring your emails land in the primary inbox. Set up the segment, run the emails, and suppress the dead weight.
If you want a specialist to audit your flows, clean your deliverability, and streamline your account structure, take a look at our email automation services to see how we can help.
