Sunset flow manual

Overview

A sunset flow is designed to phase out customers who are no longer engaged with your brand. You can use this flow as a last attempt to win back their business and then remove or suppress anyone who does not respond. This will help you maintain a 'clean' list and avoid sending emails to unengaged subscribers, which could potentially harm your deliverability.

When Should You Sunset Your Subscribers?

Continuously sending emails to subscribers who never open or click on them signals to email providers (like Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) that you are not a reliable sender. Eventually, these providers will start placing your emails in the spam folder. To prevent this, you should regularly clean your lists. Before you completely give up on these contacts, try to re-engage them using a Winback flow and then offer them a final chance to remain a subscriber through a Sunset flow.

Before creating a sunset flow, set up a winback flow that attempts to bring back lapsed customers. This flow typically offers promotions and high-quality content to grab the reader's attention, along with a prominent unsubscribe/manage preferences link. For more information, refer to this guide on creating a Winback flow.

Unlike a winback flow, which is generally focused solely on past customers, a sunset flow is often sent to every unengaged subscriber, meaning someone who has signed up for messages from you but has not interacted with those messages in a while. The final flow gives such contacts one last chance to continue receiving your messages. By setting up your sunset segment and flow, it’s also easy to clean your list of anyone who is no longer interacting with your brand.

For this flow, you need to determine who is considered "inactive" for your business. This largely depends on your sending schedule. If you send daily, three months of inactivity is a good indicator that someone is not engaged, while six months is better if you are a monthly sender.

Setting Up a Sunset Segment

A sunset flow is triggered by being added to a specific segment. Your segment should be defined based on the following engagement criteria:

These conditions are intended for those who send daily to their subscribers. If you do not send every day, extend the timeframe from 90 days to a larger number, such as 180 days.

If you have a winback flow, you should add another condition to this segment. However, which condition you use depends on whether you want people to use the winback and sunset flows together or separately. If you want to use them together, make sure recipients have time to fully go through the winback flow before entering the sunset flow. Additionally, add a condition to include only those who received the last message in the winback flow.

Alternatively, you can exclude those who have entered the winback flow from the sunset flow. In this case, add an AND connector and specify that someone has received zero emails from the winback flow over time.

By capturing people who were engaged in the past but not recently, you can filter out anyone who is not engaged at all and is unlikely to respond to your content. Anyone who has been on your newsletter list for more than 90 days and has never opened or clicked an email should simply be suppressed. They do not need to go through a Sunset flow because it is highly unlikely they will respond, and sending more emails could negatively impact your deliverability.

You may want to add an OR connector to the segment described above to include people who have placed at least one order. This would make the segment more similar to a winback flow, and if you add this condition, consider combining the two flows into a single re-engagement flow.

Setting Up a Sunset Flow

Build a flow that is triggered by being added to your sunset segment.

Then, add a flow filter to exclude anyone who opens or clicks an email since the flow started. Anyone who interacts with your sunset email (or any other email you send them while they are in the flow) will automatically be removed from the flow and will not be tagged for suppression.

Add one to three emails asking customers to unsubscribe if they are no longer interested in receiving your emails. It’s best to limit this flow to no more than three emails, as you do not want to repeatedly contact people who are not engaged, as this could harm your deliverability. Anyone who unsubscribes will be automatically suppressed without you (or them) needing to take further action.

After the last email, include a short Time Delay to give recipients time to open or click the email. Here, that period is three days, assuming a daily sending frequency. If you send less frequently, set a longer period, such as 7-10 days.

Finally, include an Update Profile Property flow action. This will tag those who do not engage with the email, thus passively indicating that they want to unsubscribe. Configure the tag to indicate that these contacts should be suppressed. You can do this by creating a new boolean profile property where the value "Suppress" is set to "True."

Thanks to the flow filters, everyone 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 Suppress = True, they will exit the flow.

Create a Suppression Segment

Maak een nieuw segment dat gebruikmaakt van de tag die je geeft aan niet-engaged abonnees die je sunset flow doorlopen. Hier is de tag Suppress. 

Create a new segment that utilizes the tag you assign to unengaged subscribers who go through your sunset flow. Here, the tag is Suppress. You should check this and periodically suppress this segment. Do this each time you regularly clean your list—it’s recommended to do this at least two to three times a year. Click on the Manage Segment dropdown and select Export Segment to CSV.

Go to the Profiles tab and click on Suppressed Profiles in the upper right corner and upload this CSV file.

You can also exclude this segment from all your campaigns to ensure you are not emailing anyone who is not engaged.

Content Best Practices

We recommend using plain text and being as personal as possible in the email by using the {{first_name}} tag and a from address like "Omar from Polaris." Add content about new products that have been released since they became unengaged and consider offering a discount to entice them to make a purchase.

You want to include prominent unsubscribe and manage preferences links in case subscribers want to update their settings instead of fully unsubscribing.

Give recipients in the email(s) the opportunity to browse your website or otherwise engage with you if they wish to remain subscribed. Below is an example from Princess Awesome.

Additionally, indicate in the subject line of the email that you are saying goodbye to these subscribers if they do not engage (e.g., "Is it time to say goodbye?" or "We already miss you"). The email from Framebridge below, for example, has the subject line: "Goodbyes are hard..."

Additional Resources

Read more about similar flows in the Klaviyo Help Center:

• Create a Segment-Triggered Flow
• Update Profile Property Action