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How sure can I be that a subscriber is inactive?


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I want to regularly clean inactive subscribers from my list, but how sure can I be that a subscriber really is inactive? Could it be that they have privacy settings on their device which prevent Klaviyo from detecting an open or click?

Best answer by emilytarvin

Hi ​@sumangali - I am so glad to hear the information was helpful!

I would agree that if you have many profiles with 0 opens and 0 clicks over all time (or a long period of time at your discretion) it is safe to say they are unengaged with email and are safe to be suppressed. You can also layer in a filter of how long since the profile was created. If someone has 0 opens or 0 clicks and their profile was created more than 6-12 months ago, it’s safe to say that they are unengaged and unlikely to engage in the future. 

Here is an example from my account of a segment that I use to track potential customers to suppress that combines the 0 click and 0 open metrics with data on how long the profile has been in the account. For me the 180-365 day range since profile creation is my cutoff. 

 

Another thing you can implement is a Sunset Flow which is a great tactic to phase out customers who are no longer engaging with your brand. You can use this flow as a last-ditch effort to win back their business, and then delete or suppress anyone who is not responsive. Here is a super detailed article about to how build and implement this flow!

I hope this helps!

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emilytarvin
Problem Solver III
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  • 15 replies
  • February 20, 2025

Hi ​@sumangali ! Welcome to the Klaviyo community, and thank you for your question! It has become more and more difficult over the years to track a ‘true’ open or click with all of the changes in email privacy rules on iOS and other platforms. Thankfully, Klaviyo has a few tricks up their sleeve to help you narrow down your engaged or unengaged customers with a few filters and other mechanisms. 

  • Update your segments to exclude bot clicks and apple mail machine opens.
    • Something you can do within your email segments is filter those who opened in the past X days where apple privacy open is false. This filters out machine opens from Apple. Here is a great Klaviyo help article that dives into more information about Apple Privacy opens.
    • You can also add a second filter in your email segments to filter those who clicked in the past X days where ‘bot click is false’. This will filter out any instances of bot clicks that are from a machine. Here is a great Klaviyo help article that goes into detail about bot clicks, monitoring them, and adjusting reporting and segments to exclude them.

       

    • Keep in mind that some of those machine opens and bot clicks still could have been a human action, but due to their privacy settings Apple or other platforms ‘masked’ the action as a machine open or bot click. This is a helpful tactic, but not fully foolproof.
  • Another helpful account feature in Klaviyo is the ability to edit your attribution settings to exclude bot clicks and machine opens.
    • You are now able to exclude machine opens and bot clicks from your data and reports by checking these boxes which can help improve your likelyhood of reporting on mostly ‘real’ interactons. 
  • You can also consider using purchase behavior as a measure of ‘engagement’ instead of opens and clicks for a more foolproof method.
    • A great way to look at engagement differently is using your customers’ purchase frequency in addition to open and click data that excludes machine and bot activity.
    • Purchase data is much more reliable as a real action that a customer took.
    • You could set standard guidelines based on your type of business and average purchase frequency to determine levels of engaged customers based on their individual purchase behavior instead of soley relying on open/click data.
      • For example, if your average customer buys 4x per year and you have a group of customers that purchases above that threshold, they could be considered highly engaged vs. someone who purchases only 1x every 3 years would be less engaged. 
    • Even better, you could pair these levels of engagement based on purchase frequency with your Klaviyo open rate data (exlcuding machine opens) and click data (excluding bot clicks) to paint a more accurate picture of overall engagement. 
    • I will leave you with one last blog article that gives a great example of different key metrics that are important to track with all of the privacy changes that have gone into effect over the past few years. 

I hope these ideas give you a headstart on how to rethink your definition of engagement in this age of email marketing. Please let me know if you have any other clarifying questions and if any of these solutions prove helpful for you.

 

Thank you for reaching out to the community! 


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  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • 2 replies
  • February 20, 2025

Hi Emily

Thanks so much for the speedy and thorough reply, this is super useful!

My concern is that I accidentally suppress a profile that has actually engaged with us – i.e. Klaviyo shows no opens/clicks for a profile but actually they may have opened/clicked without us knowing. As you point out, it’s more likely we would have a false positive than a false negative (i.e. what looks like an open could just be a bot / Apple privacy open).

Would you say then that if Klaviyo is showing no opens and no clicks for a profile for a given time, that’s going to be pretty solid data? That way we can suppress them without worrying that they were actually opening/clicking without us knowing?

Many thanks again

Sumangali


emilytarvin
Problem Solver III
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  • 2025 Champion
  • 15 replies
  • Answer
  • February 20, 2025

Hi ​@sumangali - I am so glad to hear the information was helpful!

I would agree that if you have many profiles with 0 opens and 0 clicks over all time (or a long period of time at your discretion) it is safe to say they are unengaged with email and are safe to be suppressed. You can also layer in a filter of how long since the profile was created. If someone has 0 opens or 0 clicks and their profile was created more than 6-12 months ago, it’s safe to say that they are unengaged and unlikely to engage in the future. 

Here is an example from my account of a segment that I use to track potential customers to suppress that combines the 0 click and 0 open metrics with data on how long the profile has been in the account. For me the 180-365 day range since profile creation is my cutoff. 

 

Another thing you can implement is a Sunset Flow which is a great tactic to phase out customers who are no longer engaging with your brand. You can use this flow as a last-ditch effort to win back their business, and then delete or suppress anyone who is not responsive. Here is a super detailed article about to how build and implement this flow!

I hope this helps!


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  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • 2 replies
  • February 20, 2025

Hi Emily

You’re a star! Thank you so much, you’ve gone above and beyond. This has been super valuable.

Sumangali


emilytarvin
Problem Solver III
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  • 2025 Champion
  • 15 replies
  • February 20, 2025

You are most welcome ​@sumangali !

Please don’t hesitate to reach back out with any further questions as you are continuing to work on this!