The Klaviyo Sunset Flow That Saves Your Deliverability (and Boosts Revenue)

Every dollar you spent acquiring those 40,000 subscribers means nothing if they're tanking your sender reputation. A proper Klaviyo sunset flow for list cleaning is the cheapest deliverability insurance policy in email marketing — and most ecommerce brands either don't have one, or have one that's barely doing anything.

This guide covers what a Klaviyo sunset flow actually does, how to set one up correctly, the engagement thresholds we use, and the most common mistakes that turn a sunset flow into a paperweight.

If you want to know whether your list health is currently helping or hurting you, run your domain through our DMARC check tool — it surfaces deliverability issues that often start with poor list hygiene.

Why List Cleaning Matters More in 2026

Mailbox providers don't grade you on your subscriber list size. They grade you on how engaged that list is when you send to it. Send to a list with 40% engaged opens and 60% dead profiles, and Gmail's filter sees a brand whose recipients don't want their email — even if 16,000 people genuinely do.

The metrics mailbox providers care about:

Open rate (still useful as a directional signal despite MPP)

Click rate

Spam complaint rate (above 0.1% triggers action; above 0.3% is dangerous)

Hard bounce rate (above 2% on any send is a red flag)

Engagement recency — what % of your sends go to addresses that opened or clicked in the last 90 days

Brands with high engagement recency get inboxed. Brands with low engagement recency get filtered to Promotions or Spam. List cleaning — via a sunset flow plus engaged-only campaign segments — is how you keep engagement recency high.

What a Klaviyo Sunset Flow Actually Does

A sunset flow does two things:

1. Identifies disengaged profiles before they damage deliverability.

2. Gives them one last chance to re-engage with a low-friction offer or check-in, then suppresses the ones who don't.

The win isn't just protecting deliverability. A well-built sunset flow also recovers a meaningful percentage of dormant subscribers — typically 4-8% of disengaged profiles re-engage, and those reactivations have above-average lifetime value because they're customers who'd opted out of paying attention but still have a relationship with the brand.

For Old School Tees, a sunset flow contributed to the broader $55K/month flow revenue baseline by capturing reactivation revenue that wasn't otherwise getting touched. For brands we onboard, the sunset flow is one of the first three flows we activate or rebuild.

When to Add a Profile to Your Klaviyo Sunset Flow

The right entry trigger is the difference between a useful sunset flow and a confused one. The trigger we use across most accounts:

Add to sunset flow when: A profile has not opened or clicked an email in the last 90 days, AND has been on the list for at least 120 days, AND has not placed an order in the last 180 days.

Each condition matters:

90 days no engagement: The window where MPP-inflated opens have stopped masking actual engagement. Below 90 days, you'll catch profiles that are just slow.

120 days minimum tenure: New subscribers should never enter a sunset flow. They need time to engage with your full welcome series and a few campaigns first.

180 days no purchase: A customer who bought 4 months ago isn't disengaged -- they're between purchases. Ordering recency overrides email engagement.

For replenishable categories (food, supplements, beauty), tighten the no-purchase window to 90 days. For durables (apparel, accessories, home), extend it to 270 days or more.

The Ideal Klaviyo Sunset Flow Structure

Three emails, spaced over 14 days:

Email 1 (Day 0): "Are you still with us?"

A no-discount, no-pressure email. Subject line direct: "Quick question for you" or "Still want to hear from us?" Content is short — 2-3 sentences — and gives the recipient three options: stay subscribed, take a single CTA action (visit the site, take a quiz, view a curated category), or unsubscribe.

The unsubscribe link in this email isn't a failure — it's the goal for genuinely uninterested profiles. Better an unsubscribe than a spam complaint or a silent dead-weight subscriber.

Email 2 (Day 5-7): A modest incentive

If they didn't engage with email 1, try a soft offer. Free shipping, a 10-15% one-time code, or early access to a new product. This is the email that recovers most of the reactivations — 60-70% of profiles that come back from sunset re-engage on email 2.

Subject line should be clear about value. Avoid clickbait — spam complaints from a sunset flow disproportionately damage your sender reputation because these recipients are already on the edge.

Email 3 (Day 12-14): Final reactivation

A direct, no-frills email. "Last email from us unless you want to stay." Make it explicit that engagement is the threshold to remain on the list. Include the strongest reasonable offer — 20% off, gift with purchase, or free expedited shipping for engaged products.

If they don't open or click email 3, the next step in the flow takes action.

Suppress vs Delete: What to Do at the End

After email 3, route non-engagers to one of two outcomes. The right choice depends on your account.

Suppress (Recommended for Most Brands)

A "Suppressed Profile" in Klaviyo means the profile still exists, still has historical purchase data, still counts toward your customer database — but no longer receives marketing email. This is the right choice for almost every ecommerce brand.

In Klaviyo, you do this with a "Update Profile Property" action in the flow that sets a custom property like marketing_engagement_status = "sunset_suppressed", then exclude that property from all your campaign and flow audiences.

Delete

Deleting a profile removes them entirely. You lose the historical purchase data tied to that email. Don't do this unless you have a specific data-hygiene or pricing reason (Klaviyo charges by active profiles, so deleting can reduce billing).

If you do choose to delete, only delete profiles with zero purchase history. Anyone who has bought stays in your database forever — their lifetime value, ordering pattern, and predictive metrics are inputs to your future segmentation.

Benchmarks: What Good List Health Looks Like

Where a healthy ecommerce email list sits:

Metric	Baseline	Good	Excellent
90-day engaged % of list	25%	40%	55%+
Active profiles / total	60%	75%	85%+
Spam complaint rate	<0.3%	<0.1%	<0.05%
Hard bounce rate per send	<2%	<1%	<0.5%
Avg open rate (engaged segment)	30%	40%	50%+
Inbox placement (Gmail)	80%	90%	95%+

If your 90-day engaged rate is below 30%, your list is bloated and your sender reputation is paying the price. The fastest path to a better number isn't more list growth — it's a properly run sunset flow paired with engaged-only campaign segments.

Engaged-Only Campaign Segments: The Other Half of List Cleaning

A sunset flow is necessary but not sufficient. Even with a sunset flow running, you should restrict your high-frequency campaigns to engaged subscribers only.

The standard segments to build:

Engaged 30 days: Opened or clicked any email in the last 30 days. Use for: weekly campaign sends, highest-frequency segment.

Engaged 60 days: Use for: lower-frequency campaigns, new product announcements.

Engaged 90 days: Use for: major sale events, seasonal pushes, BFCM warm-up.

Engaged 120-180 days: Use only for: tentpole moments and reactivation campaigns.

Don't send your standard weekly campaign to a 180-day engaged segment. The unengaged tail of that segment will drag your metrics down and over time will cost you inbox placement on the engaged segment too.

For more on how this layered approach plays into a full retention program, our retention marketing ecommerce guide walks through the broader segmentation system.

Common Klaviyo Sunset Flow Mistakes

Five patterns we see repeatedly:

1. Triggering too early. Adding profiles to sunset after 30 days of inactivity is too aggressive. You're suppressing customers who are between purchases or between engagement cycles. 90 days is the right minimum.

2. Not checking purchase recency. A customer who ordered 60 days ago shouldn't enter a sunset flow even if they haven't opened a marketing email. They're an active customer, just not an active marketing reader.

3. Including new subscribers. Profiles under 120 days old should be excluded from sunset entirely. They haven't been on the list long enough for "no engagement" to be a meaningful signal.

4. Failing to actually suppress. A sunset flow that ends with no action is just a vanity flow. The whole point is removing profiles from your active sending audience. Make sure the final step updates a profile property and that property is excluded from all campaign segments.

5. Running the sunset flow but still campaigning to the full list. This is the most common mistake. The sunset flow handles the long tail, but if your weekly campaigns still go to "all subscribers," you're undermining the work. Always layer engaged-only segments on top of the sunset flow.

Connecting List Health to Revenue

The reason list cleaning is worth doing isn't ideological. It's economic.

When Linus Bikes tightened campaign sends to engaged-only segments and ran an aggressive sunset cleanup early in our engagement, total send volume dropped about 30% — but revenue per send went up by roughly 1.7x because every send was reaching more receptive inboxes. Net revenue from email increased while costs (sends, support, complaint handling) decreased.

This is the dynamic to remember: list size is a vanity metric. Engaged list size is the revenue metric. A 60,000-profile list with 40% engagement consistently outperforms a 100,000-profile list with 18% engagement. The sunset flow is how you maintain that ratio as your acquisition keeps adding raw subscribers.

For Shopify email flows more broadly, list hygiene is the foundation that every other flow's performance depends on. Cleaning isn't separate from revenue work — it's the precondition for it.

FAQ

What is a Klaviyo sunset flow?

A Klaviyo sunset flow is an automated sequence that identifies disengaged subscribers, attempts to re-engage them through a final 2-3 email series, and suppresses non-responders from your marketing list. It protects your sender reputation by preventing low-engagement profiles from dragging down your inbox placement on every send.

When should I add someone to a Klaviyo sunset flow?

Add a profile to your sunset flow when they have not opened or clicked an email in 90 days, have been on your list for at least 120 days, and have not placed an order in 180 days (90 days for consumables, 270 days for durables). All three conditions matter — triggering on email engagement alone misses active customers between purchases.

Should I delete or suppress profiles after a sunset flow?

For most ecommerce brands, suppress rather than delete. Suppressed profiles retain historical purchase data and predictive metrics, which feed future segmentation. Delete only profiles with zero purchase history if billing or data-hygiene reasons require it — never delete a profile with order history.

How often should I run a Klaviyo sunset flow?

A sunset flow should run continuously, with profiles entering whenever they meet the trigger criteria. New profiles entering disengagement happen every day, so the flow needs to evaluate new entrants daily. Pair it with engaged-only campaign segments and weekly review of list health metrics.

Get an Honest Read on Your List Health

If you're not sure whether your list is helping or hurting your deliverability, run your domain through the DMARC check tool — authentication failures often correlate with the same list-health issues a sunset flow solves.

For a complete picture of how list hygiene, authentication, and flow architecture work together to protect deliverability, our retention marketing ecommerce and Shopify email flows guides cover the wider system. The sunset flow is the keystone — but it works best as part of a coordinated approach.