Hey Vaughan, the simple reason why Klaviyo advices on double opt-in is to lower the rate of your emails going to spam and increase email deliverability.

It's just an extra step to confirm if a subscriber actually wants to receive emails from you.

I run email marketing and to be honest, a large number of folks don't confirm the double opt-in  because they forget and it's a lot more tedious. So they end up not actually becoming subscribers. You should make it seamless so it's easy to sign up. 

I personally wouldn't advice it. There are many other KEY ways you can prevent your emails from ending up in spam and increase the number of your emails that gets right into the inbox of your subscribers. For example,

1.) Warm your account if you just switched email providers or are using Klaviyo for the first time. Do this for 2 weeks.

2.) Send only KEY flows at first. They are the most engaging emails. KEY flows like welcome emails which has the highest open rates at about 80%, cart/browse/checkout abandonment emails, post-purchase/Thank Yous/Upsell, Cross-sell email.

Send these flows to the subscribers who have engaged with your brand in the last 30 days only at first. Then as you monitor your open rate, and click rate you can increase the benchmark to include 60,90 days etc.

3.) Ask for reply within your email from your subscribers. Tell them to also add you to the primary tab so that the service provider recognizes your email as one of those they actually want to see.

4.) With Klaviyo and new updates to iOS and Gmail, don't just  focus only open rates when sending flows and campaigns. Look at your click rates, click-through rates and purchases.

Collecting these data will help you with better segmentation of your list.

In addition, you can also collect first hand data using Klaviyo's integration with Typeform and also review app you use(if you do use one).

6.) Clean your list every 6 months. Remove/suppress anyone who has not opened/engaged with any of your emails in the last 6 months.

Email deliverability and marketing is quality of quantity. 

I hope this helps.

Hey Edgar, thank you for the detailed response.

I have some further questions if you have the time? (in relation to your bullet points)

The store I’m working with is brand new - no subscribers yet really

1. What’s the best method to warm up an account?

2. I have the core flows set up currently (not live) WS, and the BA, CA, CA - these are 9 emails long each - is this too long for a new store?
   
   Since it’s new I would just send to everyone who signs up? as they have all technically engaged with the brand 

Thanks for your time!

You are very much welcome,Vaughan. So I have answered the second question about if the emails are too long in the answer section of where you asked it. (I saw this later).

The best method to warm your account:

So since you have no subscriber yet, you cannot segment based on the users who have opened/clicked your email in 30-60-90 days. So here's the best method I'd give:

Warm the email account you are sending from for 2 weeks.

If you have the funds you can use Email on Acid. It helps you test every single email design, subject line and preview text before you send it.

If you don't have the budget, you can make use of Instantly.ai's warm up tool. The free trial is 14 days so it covers for that.

​​​

Make these four emails live. Welcome Email, Cart/Browse/Checkout, Thank Yous and Upsell.

But before you make them live, make sure the email design is responsive and designed for mobile version. 

Look at the headline. Don't include anything spammy like $$ or FREE.

Personalize. With your pop-up opt-in form, collect personal data like first name so you can make use of it, birth day and whatever you feel necessary. Include personalization tags too.

The address of the email account also matters. You might want to send from an account with the "Brand Name" or "Name from Brand Name". So for example,  if the name of your store is Nimus. Let your sender name be 'Nimus' or 'Vaughan from Nimus'

This helps subscribers to immediately know who it is from.

Also, ensure the body copy of your email is properly written, easy to read and doesn't include spammy words, so it doesn't trigger spam, actually.

So why did I focus on only these four flows?

Don't try to set up all the flows you can immediately you start sending emails on your account.

The reason is because these emails are triggered only when a user had done an activity. So they are the most to get a subscriber to click.

And when a subscriber engages with your email, they tell Gmail that they want to see such.

In your Welcome email, ask subscribers to add you to primary tab.

OR

You can send an email with the headline: (First Name), check  your inbox tomorrow" to subscribers who interacted (opened/clicked) your welcome email, and go on to tell the subscriber to add you to the primary tab so they can get an incentive you have for them since they don't want to miss out.

Then as time goes on, send segmented campaigns and increase the volume of the emails you are sending.

So in summary, the best method I'd say is to use warm tools and start with the FOUR MOST CORE email flows making sure they are well designed.

Hey @GVaughan, great answers by @Edgar Emmanuel.

If your keeping double opt-in off, I’d emphasize point 6 from Edgar to clean your list regularly.  Since you’re starting out from 0, keep an eye for any unusual behaviour (high subscribe rate, low engagement rate - especially in your first welcome email). 

@Edgar Emmanuel Thank you so much for your help, greatly appreciated 

@Mailbox Manny Likewise, thank you too