Should I import 6000 profiles from 16 years of trade ... all non-subscribed contacts?

Hey ​@Dion Bright, welcome to the community...

You are right to want a clean, compliant start. However, manually making 5,000+ contacts as opted in when they never gave permission for marketing isn't recommended.... This could hurt your deliverability and violate consent rules, especially for sms.

I would suggest to import them as profile not into list. Then create a re permission campaign, use a form preference center to let them opt in clearly. Now you can clean and grow from those who engage. This keeps your sender reputation safe and builds a more reliable list.

Thanks for your help!

That sounds like fundamentally what I’m wanting. I want to contact these people to let them know they can opt-in or engage, but I don’t want to damage my sender reputation. I think I’ll focus on email for now.

So if I don’t import them into my Email list, how do I get them into Klaviyo? They are already in Shopify (5822 of them). I’m not actually sure how the 1320 profiles got into the Email list already, but I know when most of them were imported into Shopify that their email and sms status was marked TRUE by default (because of their origin). So ALL of these 5822 profiles are customers, but I don’t actually know the marketing status of any of them.

Do I need to look up from a permission campaign is? How are they contacted then if not by email?

Awesome 👍 you can focus on email first is a good call to clarify... You can import or sync them into klaviyo but just don't add them to a list or mark them as email subscribed ( don't set consent to True) let them stay as profiles because it keeps them in your account but avoids sending to people who haven't opted in yet. And the permission campaign is an email but it's sent only to a small, safer segment like small recent customers or those who engaged in the past 1—2 years.

How to contact them if not via email? You can start with those you feel safest emailing like someone who bought recently, as you get new subscribers through forms, popups, or re permission emails, your list grows naturally and cleanly.

Thanks. I’m very reluctant to abandon 6000 email customers. And if I only engage a few in the recent past with a permissions campaign, I’m walking away from the rest. My business is currently tiny, and I get only a few sales a week. I’m not a national retailer who has to worry. I’m happy to ask forgiveness rather than permission … and that’s what my opening email can be … “Would you like to hear form us?”

I have to worry about unsubscribes, but my reading suggests that unsubscribes do not affect sender reputation.

All these profiles already exist in Klavioy. And because almost all came from our POS software over the past 16 years, all have marketing set to TRUE.

What if I reset marketing to FALSE, and begin emailing them in small batches. Can I email people from Klaviyo when their marketing setting is FALSE? Can they be segmented and targeted with a permission email?

I still don’t know what I can and can’t do in Klaviyo because I’m just beginning, so maybe I need to experiment. Do you know any examples of excellent campaign emails for permission?

Hmmm,

Totally understand your situation...... Many small businesses feel the same when starting email marketing, especially with a long history of customers relationships. You are right that subscribes alone don't directly hurt sender reputation, but if too many people mark your email as spam even unintentionally, it can affect future deliverability. That's why pacing and messaging are key.
You can email profiles even if their status is false but just don't add them to a list instead use a segment based on criteria like place an order before X date and send your permission campaign from there. Sending email batches like: "We have connected before and would love to stay in touch— click here if you would like to keep hearing from us". It's a very good way to re engage without being pushy or even risky.

Thanks Byrne and MANSR2094 very much for the replies. They’re both very helpful.

Yes, I’m imported them all with their marketing status as TRUE, but I can reimport them as FALSE.

Very few of our emails would be EU based, but regardless, I do want to respect both the law and customer privacy. I feel that all emails collected have been done so buying or enquiring about our products, so I’m comfortable ethically sending a minimal permission email.

Maybe I need a dual strategy.

1    Follow the guide suggested

• Get a sign-ip pop-up going on my site
• Build my list organically from zero

2    Retrospectively request permission from the 6000 existing profiles

• Warm the domain
• Email them slowly in small batches over the coming year

I am confused about whether I should be adding them to a list, or not.

• Does Klaviyo charge for profiles not in a List that are set to FALSE?
• Can profiles even be in a List if they are FALSE?
• Can I email customers a campaign if their status is FALSE and not in a List via a Segment?

I don’t believe segmentation rules will be able to identify customers based on any data, because most profiles came from my POS and there’s no sales data within.

• Can I select customers from non-subscribed profiles manually, 100 at a time etc?

I’m also unaware of how to create a pop-up, and how Klaviyo can interfere with the way my website operates. I assume the installation of Klaviyo gate it permission to do so.

I’ll do some reading to explore both.

Hey Dion,

From what you described, it does seem like these customers want to receive marketing emails, so I agree with you that there shouldn’t be any ethical concerns about their email consent status! That being said, it will definitely be key to slowly warm your domain while ramping up the amount of people you’re sending to at a time, while acquiring new customers into your list.

How did your profiles enter Klaviyo? Did you manually import them via CSV file, or did you connect Shopify to Klaviyo already? If you imported profiles via CSV, those profiles should already be in a list anyway. When importing profiles, they need to be imported into a list.

Regarding your questions about profiles and their consent statuses:

We don’t determine if profiles can receive emails by if they have a certain property set to FALSE or TRUE. There are 3 email consent statuses a profile can have, and that determines what messages they can receive. These statuses can be seen on the left side of every profile with an email. They are below.

Subscribed:

These profiles are subscribed to email marketing, and you can send them marketing messages freely. They are active profiles that count towards your active profile count and you are charged for them.

Never Subscribed:

These profiles are TECHNICALLY allowed to receive marketing emails. Basically, we’re not sure if they want to receive email marketing, but they did provide you with their email in some capacity, and we won’t stop you from sending them marketing emails. These do count towards your active profile count, and you are charged for them.

Unsubscribed/Suppressed:

The image above shows a “suppressed” status, which is functionally the same as an “unsubscribed” status. These people cannot receive marketing emails, and Klaviyo will not allow marketing emails to send to them. Unsubscribed profiles unsubscribed on their own. Suppressed profiles were suppressed by you, or automatically by Klaviyo. These are not active profiles and you will not have to pay for them.

Profiles can be in a list, no matter their subscription status. If you send a campaign to a list of half subscribed, half unsubscribed contacts, the campaign will simply skip the unsubscribed contacts.

A profile needs to be in a list or a segment to receive campaigns. If they’re not in a list or segment, you can add them to a list, or create a segment that would capture them, based on the characteristics they have. And just to reiterate, we don’t determine who can receive email marketing by a TRUE/FALSE status. If a person’s consent status is Subscribed or Never Subscribed, they can receive an email you’re trying to send them. Basically you can send campaigns to not subscribed contacts, as long as you add them to any list or segment.

If you need help with signup forms, I’m happy to answer any questions, but I’d recommend taking a look at our two guides about getting started with Shopify and with Sign-up forms, to familiarize yourself with how this works!

Let me know if I can help with anything else!

-Byrne