How to create a sunset flow
You will learn
Learn how to set up a sunset flow that is designed 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. You will also see how this recommended sunset segment definition connects to the prebuilt Sunset (Email) segment in the Segment Library. This will help you maintain a clean list and avoid having inactive customers contribute towards your Klaviyo billing plan.
When to sunset subscribers
Since sunset flows act as a final effort to engage profiles, you should sunset lists and segments that you plan to suppress. Once you suppress a profile, they will be unable to receive marketing emails and promotions from your brand. By sunsetting these profiles, you have an opportunity to exclude profiles that engage with the flow from suppression, as they still are valuable to keep as active and send to.
You should also sunset profiles as they become inactive, or churn as customers. It no longer makes sense to keep them as active in your account and have them contribute towards your Klaviyo billing plan. These are profiles that have demonstrated a long, sustained period of inactivity (i.e., no website visits, purchases, or marketing engagement). Due to this sustained period of inactivity, it is highly unlikely that these profiles will engage with your brand again.
Once a profile is no longer generating any revenue for your business in Klaviyo and you do not see any opportunity to win them back, you can take action to suppress them so they do not count towards your Klaviyo billing plan.
Set up a sunset segment
A sunset flow is triggered when a profile is added to a particular segment. While the recommended segment below enables you to identify and sunset profiles that have demonstrated a long period of inactivity, you can run any segment or list you plan to suppress through a sunset flow.
To identify profiles that have demonstrated sustained periods of inactivity, you can build the following segment and run it through a sunset flow:
- If someone can or cannot receive marketing > Person can receive email marketing
AND - Properties about someone > Created is at least 180 days ago
AND - What someone has done (or not done) > has Received Email at least 5 in the last 72 weeks
AND - What someone has done (or not done) > has Opened Email 0 times over all time
AND - What someone has done (or not done) > has Clicked Email 0 times over all time
AND - What someone has done (or not done) > has Active on Site 0 times over all time
AND - What someone has done (or not done) > has Viewed Product 0 times over all time
AND - What someone has done (or not done) > has Checkout Started 0 times over all time
AND - What someone has done (or not done) > has Placed Order 0 times over all time
This definition also appears as the prebuilt Sunset (Email) segment in the Segment Library, and it is the same logic Klaviyo uses for suppression recommendations on the Suppressed profiles page.
First navigate to the Segment Library, and you'll see the "Sunset (Email)" option.
When you select it, you will see the following definition of the Sunset (Email) Segment and be able to name it and add tags.
Deliverability benefit
One of the major benefits of building this segment is to suppress it and stop delivering to profiles that are unmonitored because sending to unmonitored inboxes will hurt your deliverability over time. Klaviyo uses this same sunset definition when recommending low engagement profiles to suppress from the Suppressed profiles page. Continuing to send to profiles in this cohort will lower your open rate, which is the most important signal used by mailbox providers to determine where future emails go (the inbox or the spam folder)
As inactive profiles enter this segment, they will trigger the sunset flow and automatically receive some final emails from your brand before they can ultimately be suppressed.
If you attempt to send emails to these inactive profiles then it has the opposite effect. Rather than improving your sending reputation, doing this will put your reputation at risk. Please do so with extreme caution.
Set up a sunset flow
After setting up your sunset segment, you will need to build a flow that is triggered by being added to your sunset segment. We recommend using a pre-built sunset flow from the flows library.
- Navigate to the Flows tab.
- Click Create Flow to view the flows library.
- In the searchbar, search for "sunset" to see Klaviyo's pre-built sunset flow.
- Click on the pre-built "sunset unengaged subscribers" flow.
- In the trigger dropdown, select your sunset segment.
- Click Create Flow at the bottom on the modal.
- Customize the message content to match your brand.
- Add past profiles to your flow if you created it for an existing list or segment.
Create a sunset flow from scratch
If you'd prefer to create a flow from scratch:
- Navigate to the Flows tab.
- Click Create Flow.
- Click Create From Scratch in the top right.
- Name your flow and click Create Flow.
- In the Trigger Setup sidebar, click Segment.
- In the dropdown, select your sunset segment.
- Add flow filters to exclude anyone who opens or clicks an email since starting the flow. Anyone who engages your sunset email (or any other email you send them while they're in the flow) will automatically be removed from the flow and will not be tagged for suppression. See the screenshot below for reference.
- Add one to three emails that prompt customers to unsubscribe if they are no longer interested in receiving emails from you. It is best to limit this flow to be no more than three emails because you don’t want to repeatedly contact people who are unengaged, since this can hurt your deliverability. Anyone who unsubscribes will be suppressed automatically, with no further action needed on your (or their) part.
- After the last email, drag in a short time delay to give recipients a grace period to open or click the email. Here, the grace period is three days, assuming a daily sending frequency. If you send less regularly, push the grace period to be a longer time period, such as 7–10 days.
- Drag in an update profile property flow action. This will tag those who do not engage with the email and thus are passively indicating that they would like to unsubscribe.
- Configure the tag to specify that these contacts should be suppressed. You can do this by creating a new boolean profile property where the value "Unengaged" is "True."
Thanks to the flow filters, anyone who opens or clicks an email will exit the flow before this action, and the tag will not be added to their profile.
Once unengaged subscribers are tagged as Unengaged = True, they will exit the flow.
Suppress unengaged profiles
Anyone who has gone through the entire sunset flow will be tagged as unengaged and can now be suppressed. To suppress these profiles:
- Navigate to the Lists & Segments tab of your account.
- Select Create New > Create Segment.
- Name your segment something that makes it clear it's meant for suppression.
- Add the following segment definition:
- Properties about someone > Unengaged > is true.
- Properties about someone > Unengaged > is true.
- Click Create segment.
- Back on the Lists & Segments tab, click the action button to the right of your new segment.
- Choose Suppress current members. This action applies to all the profiles within the list or segment at the time of suppression, and does not impact profiles that join after. If a profile in the group is already suppressed, their status will not be impacted.
Please note that you will have to do this each time before sending a campaign to effectively phase inactive profiles out of future sends. It is not currently possible to suppress profiles as a Flow Action.
There is a workaround for this but you would need to utilize Klaviyo's API to do this. This will require a developer. If you are a developer, please see the process documented in the article, "Solution Recipe 9: Use Klaviyo Flow Webhooks to Automate Suppressions Using Segments and Klaviyo’s APIs .
When you suppress other lists or segments that may include recently active customers, Klaviyo may show a suppression modal summarizing how many profiles will be suppressed versus kept active based on recent verified email engagement or purchases.
For the strict “sunset” segment defined above (no opens, clicks, site activity, or orders), you generally won’t see this modal, because those profiles are already classified as long‐term inactive and ready to be suppressed. Learn more about how to manage email suppressions and delete profiles in bulk.
Flow content best practices
We recommend using plain text and being as personal as you can in the email by using the {{ first_name }} tag and a from address like "Marissa from Klaviyo." Include content about any new products that have been released since they've become unengaged and consider offering a discount to entice them to buy.
You will want to include prominent unsubscribe and manage preferences links, in case subscribers want to update their settings rather than unsubscribe completely.
In the email(s), give recipients the option to browse your site or otherwise interact with you if they do want to remain subscribed. Below is an example from Princess Awesome.
In addition, indicate in the email subject line that you will say goodbye to these subscribers if they continue to not engage (e.g., “Is it time to say goodbye?” or “We miss you already”). For instance, the email below from Framebridge has the subject line: “Goodbyes are hard...”
Add past profiles
When you create a sunset segment, it will be filled with profiles that previously fit the criteria in the segment definition. However, the flow will only trigger for profiles that organically enter the segment, i.e., those that fulfill the segment's criteria after it was created.
If you'd like to add past profiles to your flow:
- Make sure the flow's messages are set to either manual or live status before adding past profiles.
- Click on the Add past profiles icon on the trigger card
Learn more about the effects of adding past profiles to a flow.
Additional resources
Read about similar flows in the Klaviyo Help Center:
- How to create a winback flow
Learn how to create a series of emails sent to customers who previously engaged with your brand, but have not interacted with you for a certain period of time. A winback flow is an essential part of customer retention and lifecycle marketing, and not having one is leaving money on the table. On average, it is five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain existing customers and encourage repeat orders.
- How to create a segment- or list-triggered flow
Learn how to create a segment- or list-triggered flow and about their re-entry setting.
- How to add an update profile property action to a flow
Learn how to add an update profile property action into a flow so that you can collect and track profile data.