Best Practice for excluding regions impacted by disasters?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 7, 2025
4 replies
138 views

I’m curious about different approaches and marking protocol around targeting communities after a disaster.
In respect to 2024 hurricane and flooding in FL and NC and the 2025 fires in CA, we have elected to exlude certain regions and zipcodes clusters from our marketing. However, I’m at a loss as to how long to exclude them from our campaigns.

I was wondering how long one keeps that approach in place? Is one month long enough to give people breathing room, assuming they will unsubscribe if it is no longer appropriate?

Best answer by Victoria_ap_G

Hi @Teri Lanier

Thanks for your question to the community.

It’s really great to be thinking about excluding certain people during times like this, sensitive marketing at it’s best.

It all depends on the product you are selling and your messaging. It’s hard to know the exact approach without knowing your brand (nutrition would be different to swimwear or interiors for example)

A month sounds like a good approach though. I would carefully consider the messaging on any future campaign due to be sent to that group of people and reword/choose images and products that are more sensitive to the situation.

It will definiltey be a ‘go light’ and keep monitoring the audience behaviour. Send emails to them separately and watch your deliverability rates closely (if everyone is unsubscribing change your approach).

You could also ask your customers directly when they want to hear from you, how often they want to hear from you, and what they want to hear from you. Build a preference centre or send them a survey. They may decide to opt out for a period of time, or want all your emails for escapism!

Hope that helps

Vic

Victoria_ap_GAnswer

2025 Champion

Hi @Teri Lanier

Thanks for your question to the community.

It’s really great to be thinking about excluding certain people during times like this, sensitive marketing at it’s best.

It all depends on the product you are selling and your messaging. It’s hard to know the exact approach without knowing your brand (nutrition would be different to swimwear or interiors for example)

A month sounds like a good approach though. I would carefully consider the messaging on any future campaign due to be sent to that group of people and reword/choose images and products that are more sensitive to the situation.

It will definiltey be a ‘go light’ and keep monitoring the audience behaviour. Send emails to them separately and watch your deliverability rates closely (if everyone is unsubscribing change your approach).

You could also ask your customers directly when they want to hear from you, how often they want to hear from you, and what they want to hear from you. Build a preference centre or send them a survey. They may decide to opt out for a period of time, or want all your emails for escapism!

Hope that helps

Vic

Email, SMS & CRM Consultant

T

Teri LanierAuthor

Contributor III

Thank you for your feedback.
We make home and garden decor (sculptures, lanterns, tables...) and the last thing we want to do is fill the inbox of someone who has lost their home.

Victoria_ap_G

2025 Champion

@Teri Lanier not a problem at all. I’m wondering if any other members of the community can jump in too.

I would definiltey err on the side of caution with home decor.

Personally I would email in a month and ask them, similar to how brands ask if people would like to opt out of mother’s / father’s day messaging. Great article here on how to do this.

Email, SMS & CRM Consultant

emilytarvin

2025 Champion

Hi @Teri Lanier - This is an important topic that is definitely not discussed widely, so thank you for bringing up this question and welcome to the Klaviyo community!

I compiled a list here of some to-dos and also ideas of how to handle these types of situations now and in the future for any specific areas effected by any type of unexepcted event or disaster.

Excluding effected zip codes from marketing: It sounds like you already mastered a great first step which is suppressing zip codes of effected areas from your campaigns. Make sure to also exclude them from any automated flows you may be running as well. You can easily do this by adding a profile filter onto your flow trigger where properties about someone > zip code > equals > effected zip codes or use the ‘proximity to location’ filter. And make sure to go back and remove it after the appropriate amount of time has passed from the event and you start to re introduce these customers back into your marketing!

Monitor a segment of effected customers who become active on your site: After the suggested month or longer from the event, you could build a segment of customers who are in the effected zip codes and have recently been active on your website (as long as you have that metric set up through your website, if you don’t there is a great article here on how to set that up!)
- I have attached a screen shot of what this segment build would look like with 2 options on how to pull the effect zip codes.
  - You can use ‘someone’s proximity to a location’ and enter the miles you want to target from one of the main effected zip codes if it is localized
  - You can use ‘properties about someone’ and use the zip code field to enter individual zip codes, and duplicate that as many times as needed.
- You would then add an ‘AND’ of Active on Site in the last couple of days to see who may have organically been navigating to your website without receiving any marketing.
Use that targeted segment of those active on site to send a preferences, discount or relief message: Depening on your brand’s stance or approach, you could start to target these customers who have been organically active on your website again with a few different types of messages.
- Relief Message: If you brand is able to help in any way or has any ability to provide assistance or even just a thoughtful note this may be a nice approach that feels personalized and lets them know you are aware of the situation in their area. If you brand made any type of relief donation to the area that may also be a nice nod to mention. This could also include an option to update preferences as Victoria mentioned so they can choose if they want to start receiving messages again or not. I would suggest adding an option in the preferences to ‘ask me again in 3 months’ or something similar to leave the window open to contact them again at a later date.
- Discount or Free Item: In your specific business, some customers may actually need your brand as they start to rebuild a home. This would be a great opportunity down the road to offer them a deep discount if possible or even a free item to help them get their rebuild started. This would build a lot of brand loyalty if you are able to provide one of the first items free for them in a new home after a disaster! Again, this is all heavily reliant on how your brand approaches these kind of sensitive subjects and how much you are able to discount/give.

I hope this helps and sparks some ideas that you can use not only now but in the case of any events that may happen again in the future (hopefully not!). Please let me know if you have any questions or need any clarification on anything. And please reach back out to us and let us know any new strategies you implement in these cases!

Emily Tarvin

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