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Suppress or delete unengaged profiles - best practice


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I am in the process of cleaning up my list after having switched from Mailchimp about 4 months ago and trying to make sure I improve my engagement and sending reputation.

 

I have successfully created my unengaged segment but now I am not sure if I should just suppress the profiles or delete them? 

Best answer by Timmy Solomon

Hi @HelenR,

Great job creating an unengaged segment! Cleaning your list is a smart step to improve engagement and maintain a strong sending reputation.

Here’s a breakdown to help you decide whether to suppress or delete profiles:

1. Suppress Profiles

  • Best For: Retaining data while ensuring you don’t send emails to unengaged profiles.
  • Benefits:
    • Keeps historical data for reporting and analytics.
    • Allows you to reactivate profiles later if needed.
  • How To: Go to the Profiles tab, select the unengaged profiles, and click on Suppress Profiles.

2. Delete Profiles

  • Best For: Completely removing profiles you’re certain you no longer need.
  • Things to Consider:
    • Deletes all data tied to the profiles, including engagement history.
    • Cannot recover deleted profiles.
  • How To: Navigate to the Profiles tab, select the profiles, and choose Delete Profiles.

Recommendation:

If you’re uncertain or might need the data in the future, suppression is the safer option. This keeps your list clean while preserving valuable insights. Deletion should only be used if you’re confident the data is no longer useful.

Let us know how it goes or if you need further guidance!

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3 replies

retention
Partner - Platinum
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  • 2025 Champion
  • 920 replies
  • January 9, 2025

Hi ​@HelenR, first welcome to the community and congrats on your successful migration to Klaviyo!

The question to suppress or delete unengaged audience is a bit tricky depending on your definition of “unengaged.”  For some of my clients who have had many years of business (decade+), they will keep profiles around for years before deleting them.  Just a note, there *is* a difference between “suppressing” and “deleting” - just note, neither counts against your active profile count.  Some information is explained here:

My recommendation is to keep the Segment and do a few tests campaigns, re-activation offers, and look at the Segment “engagement reports” to make sure they are clearly not viable.  However, do this sparingly and create smaller subsets to test so that it doesn’t impact your overall deliverability. 

In most cases, you can simply exclude unengaged audience by strategically planning your Campaigns to either exclude them explicitly or by sending to different engagement tier Segments where they will not receive emails as they become increasingly unengaged. 

You can see this approach here:

Only until you are completely confident that they are not viable, then you can go ahead and suppress (or deleting them).  Hope this helps!


Timmy Solomon
Problem Solver III
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  • Problem Solver III
  • 19 replies
  • Answer
  • January 10, 2025

Hi @HelenR,

Great job creating an unengaged segment! Cleaning your list is a smart step to improve engagement and maintain a strong sending reputation.

Here’s a breakdown to help you decide whether to suppress or delete profiles:

1. Suppress Profiles

  • Best For: Retaining data while ensuring you don’t send emails to unengaged profiles.
  • Benefits:
    • Keeps historical data for reporting and analytics.
    • Allows you to reactivate profiles later if needed.
  • How To: Go to the Profiles tab, select the unengaged profiles, and click on Suppress Profiles.

2. Delete Profiles

  • Best For: Completely removing profiles you’re certain you no longer need.
  • Things to Consider:
    • Deletes all data tied to the profiles, including engagement history.
    • Cannot recover deleted profiles.
  • How To: Navigate to the Profiles tab, select the profiles, and choose Delete Profiles.

Recommendation:

If you’re uncertain or might need the data in the future, suppression is the safer option. This keeps your list clean while preserving valuable insights. Deletion should only be used if you’re confident the data is no longer useful.

Let us know how it goes or if you need further guidance!


Christiannoerbjerg
Expert Problem Solver II
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Hi ​@HelenR 

Thank you for posting in the Community!

As per your question, i would advice you to make a segment, of the customers, which you would like to suppress. Then you would setup a flow, which triggers by people being added to the segment, that you have created. 

After that, you insert a webhook to the automation, which have the following setup: 

Header: https://a.klaviyo.com/api/profile-suppression-bulk-create-jobs

Authorization: Klaviyo-API-Key your-private-api-key
accept: application/vnd.api+json
content-type: application/vnd.api+json
revision: 2024-10-15

{
  "data": {
    "type": "profile-suppression-bulk-create-job",
    "attributes": {
      "profiles": {
        "data": [
          {
            "type": "profile"
          }
        ]
      }
    }

That will automatically suppress the contact(s).

Hope that helps! :-) 

Christian Nørbjerg Enger
Partner & CPO
Web: Segmento.dk
LinkedIn: @christianfromsegmento
Voldbjergvej 22b, 8240 Risskov