When an e-commerce brand sees falling email engagement or fewer email-driven orders, the immediate instinct is often to change subject lines or send more campaigns. Neither approach solves a reputation or audience-quality problem.
A more useful starting point is a structured deliverability review. The objective is to understand whether your messages are eligible to be sent, accepted by mailbox providers and actually useful to recipients.
1. Verify how contacts joined the audience
Separate clearly opted-in subscribers from contacts collected through checkout, manual imports and older forms. Check whether the marketing consent recorded in your CRM matches the consent customers actually provided. An imported customer list is not automatically a marketable list.
2. Review your domain authentication
Confirm the sending domain and any relevant SPF, DKIM and DMARC configurations required for your email provider. Also verify that visible sender names, reply-to addresses and linked domains look trustworthy to recipients. Authentication is foundational, but alone does not guarantee inbox placement.
3. Segment by meaningful engagement
Recent opens and clicks are imperfect signals; privacy features can distort some open metrics. Combine them with purchase behavior, signup source and other relevant activity. Avoid treating every profile as equally suitable for every campaign.
4. Handle suppression deliberately
Review hard bounces, unsubscribes, complaints and long-term inactivity. In Klaviyo, email suppression and consent status are distinct concepts. Suppressing someone from marketing is different from deleting their profile or changing the historical record of their consent.
5. Audit campaign cadence
Check whether an increase in send frequency preceded a drop in engagement, a rise in complaints or a change in audience composition. Sending more often can increase short-term reach while harming customer experience and long-term deliverability.
6. Review content quality and expectation-setting
Subject lines should accurately reflect the content. Promotional messaging should align with the brand and the subscriber’s expectations. Emails with misleading urgency, irrelevant products or excessive discounting can erode trust even when technically delivered.
7. Inspect flows separately from campaigns
Automations such as welcome, abandonment and post-purchase messages reach customers in different contexts. Evaluate triggers, filters, personalization and behavior-based eligibility rather than applying one sending strategy to everything.
8. Use the right metrics
Monitor bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes, clicks, attributable orders and overall business trends. Review results by domain and audience segment where possible. Neither one Klaviyo score nor a high open rate is enough to demonstrate healthy deliverability.
A monthly operating checklist
- Confirm consent and unsubscribe handling are functioning.
- Review recently imported or newly acquired profile sources.
- Identify long-term inactive segments and apply an appropriate re-engagement or suppression policy.
- Check authentication and sending-domain configuration after relevant changes.
- Compare engagement and complaint trends by audience and campaign type.
- Test automation triggers and exclusions after site or CRM updates.
- Tie reporting back to orders, customer retention and unsubscribes.
The commercial point
Deliverability is not a vanity metric. The goal is a trustworthy communications program that reaches appropriate customers, maintains sender reputation and contributes to sustainable sales. Improving the health of an email program can be more valuable than adding another campaign to an already crowded calendar.
For platform-specific guidance, see Klaviyo’s list-cleaning guide and its explanation of suppressed email profiles. Always review applicable marketing and privacy requirements.
Need someone to review the configuration rather than keep guessing? Start with our free preliminary lifecycle review. You can also learn more about our email marketing and Klaviyo work.