You’d make a lot more money if only more of your list were more interested, right? Maybe you’ve gotten used to open rates of 10%, 7% or only 4%. Maybe you’re used to Hotmail or Yahoo open rates at a fraction of what you get from other ESPs? You may be sending emails to too many people when, in reality, less may be more. 

Remember, the longer Klaviyo and ESPs perceive your list to be generally uninterested, the more they will label your emails as spam. The more this happens,  the fewer recipients will even see them, lowering open rates even further. For this reason, it’s crucial you follow these steps to avoid the Spam Email Death Spiral. 

1️⃣ First set yourself an open rate target of  around 20%. With this open rate, Klaviyo and spam filters will consider your list  engagement good. They will slowly elevate you into a better position, with less of your email labelled spam.

2️⃣ Filter the segments by engagement duration. The most popular metric you can use is opened at least once in the last X days. The X is like a dimmer switch: turn back the dial to a smaller number of days, and you’ll send to fewer, more engaged people. Or turn forward the dial to a greater number of days to send to more people who are less engaged. If 60 days gives you 15%, ratchet the segment back to 45 days to increase that open rate. 

3️⃣ Start isolating ESPs by creating different segments—or separate dimmer switches—for each. That way you can, say,  “turn up” Yahoo email recipients if the open rate for your engagement duration is above 30% while “turning down” Hotmail if its open rate is below 20%.   To do this create an extra condition with the AND function and select: properties about someone | email | Contains + email domain (e.g., @gmail). This allows you to select the engagement duration just for Gmail accounts.

4️⃣ Adjust your segments according to the results you receive after each send. One important thing to note is that analytics will be accurate only a couple of days after you sent your campaign so don’t adjust instantly. 

5️⃣ In one or two months you will start realizing larger and larger segments along with stronger revenue as well. 

All in all, be patient, continually adjusting your segments, and results will come sooner than later. Of course, there is more to this topic, and, if you’re interested, we can provide help. Just hit me up here at Hustler Marketing to brainstorm more ideas. 

Cheers!

By Rokas Raskevicius and Thomas McClintock