We Suppressed 20,724 Email Contacts. It Saved Money, Protected Deliverability, and Most Brands Never Run This Audit.
By Steve Merrill | May 14, 2026
Twenty thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four contacts.
That's how many people in one client's Klaviyo account hadn't opened a single email in six months. They were still getting every campaign. Still being counted in the active profile total driving up the monthly bill. Still silently signaling to Gmail and Outlook that the brand's emails weren't worth opening.
Nobody had run the suppression audit. Not because they didn't know they should. Because it felt risky to remove that many names from the list.
We ran it anyway. The results were immediate: lower Klaviyo costs, better deliverability metrics, and higher open rates on subsequent campaigns, because we were no longer measuring performance against a massive base of people who would never open.
Here's exactly how this audit works and why most Shopify brands are carrying dead weight they're actively paying to harm their results.
---Why Do Unengaged Contacts Hurt More Than They Help?
Every email you send to a contact who never opens is a small negative signal to inbox providers. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo watch engagement patterns at the domain level. When a consistent percentage of your emails go unopened across tens of thousands of addresses, providers start treating your sending domain as lower-quality.
This isn't theoretical. Google Postmaster Tools shows your sending domain reputation in real time. Brands carrying large unengaged segments almost always have lower domain reputation than brands that actively suppress non-openers. Lower domain reputation means more of your emails land in spam, including for your engaged subscribers who actually want them.
The math is brutal: sending to 50,000 people where 20,000 never engage doesn't improve your metrics. It actively damages deliverability for the 30,000 who do. You're paying to hurt yourself.
---What Is Suppression and How Is It Different From Unsubscribing?
Suppression stops sending campaigns to a contact, without deleting them from your database or treating them as unsubscribed.
An unsubscribe is initiated by the contact. It's permanent until they explicitly re-opt-in. Suppression is initiated by you. It's reversible. You can unsuppress a contact at any point when you have a reason to, say, a major product launch where you want to give long-dormant subscribers one last chance.
In Klaviyo, suppressed contacts also stop counting toward your active profile total, which drives billing. The ProfitMax client suppression resulted in a meaningful drop in their monthly Klaviyo bill on the next billing cycle.
---How Do You Run the Suppression Audit in Klaviyo?
The process takes about 30 minutes for most Shopify brands. Here's the sequence we use:
Step 1: Define Your Unengaged Segment
In Klaviyo, create a new segment with these conditions:
- Has not opened email in the last 180 days
- Subscribed more than 180 days ago (this filters out recent additions who just haven't had the chance to engage)
For brands sending infrequently (monthly), extend to 365 days. For high-frequency senders (daily or 3x/week), you can tighten to 90 days. 180 is the reliable default for most Shopify brands sending 2-4 times per month.
Step 2: Run a Win-Back Campaign First
Before suppressing, send one final campaign to this segment. Subject line: "We haven't seen you in a while, do you still want to hear from us?" Single CTA: a clear click to stay subscribed.
This does two things. It gives genuinely dormant customers who just hadn't opened (maybe they changed inbox habits) one chance to re-engage. And it makes your suppression defensible, you gave people a choice before removing them from your active list. Anyone who doesn't click in 72 hours is confirmed unengaged and ready for suppression.
Step 3: Suppress the Segment
In Klaviyo: Profiles > export your finalized unengaged segment as a CSV. Then go to Suppressions > Suppress Profiles > upload the CSV.
Klaviyo processes this in batches. For 20,000+ profiles, allow a few hours. Once complete, these contacts receive no further campaigns.
Step 4: Verify the Impact
Check Google Postmaster Tools and your Klaviyo campaign reports for the two sends following suppression. Most brands see:
- Open rate increase (same opens, smaller denominator)
- Spam complaint rate decrease
- Bounce rate improvement
- Klaviyo active profile count reduction (billing impact next cycle)
What About the Contacts Who Come Back?
Some will. Seasonality is real, someone who bought a holiday gift in December and didn't engage all spring might come back in October. A suppressed contact who visits your site and re-opts-in through a pop-up or checkout restores their active status automatically.
The fear of suppressing is usually "what if I need them later." The reality: a contact who hasn't opened in six months is not a resource you're protecting. Klaviyo's own data shows that unengaged contacts drag down domain reputation faster than they convert on any future campaign. The expected value of keeping 20,000 non-openers is negative, not zero, negative.
Run the audit. Send the win-back. Suppress the rest. Repeat every 6-12 months.
---What's the Deliverability Math for a Typical Shopify Brand?
- Before suppression: 68,000 active profiles, ~30% unengaged, Klaviyo billing at 50K-75K tier
- After suppression: ~47,000 active profiles, billing dropped to 25K-50K tier
- Open rate change: 18% → 24% (same number of opens, smaller active base)
- Domain reputation: Moved from "Low" to "Medium" in Google Postmaster Tools within 30 days
- Spam complaint rate: Dropped below the 0.1% threshold Gmail uses for deliverability flagging
The suppression didn't make their content better. It made their list match their actual audience, the people who want to hear from them. That alignment is what email is supposed to look like.
---FAQ
What does suppressing email contacts actually do?
Suppression stops sending campaigns to a contact without deleting them from your database. In Klaviyo and most email platforms, suppressed contacts don't count toward your active profile limit (reducing costs) and don't receive campaigns (protecting deliverability). They're not gone, they're paused. If they re-engage later, you can unsuppress them.
How do unengaged contacts hurt email deliverability?
Email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo use engagement signals to judge sender reputation. When a large percentage of your list never opens your emails, providers interpret that as evidence that your content isn't wanted, which triggers more aggressive spam filtering for your entire sending domain. Sending to 50,000 people with 20,000 never engaging doesn't just waste the 20,000 sends. It actively damages deliverability to the 30,000 who do want your emails.
How long should someone be unengaged before suppression?
The standard threshold is 180 days (6 months) of no opens or clicks. Some brands use 90 days for a more aggressive approach, others use 365 days if they send infrequently. For Shopify brands sending 2-4 emails per month, 180 days is the right balance, it's long enough to capture seasonal buyers without carrying permanently dead addresses indefinitely.
Is suppression the same as unsubscribing?
No. Unsubscription is initiated by the contact and is permanent. Suppression is initiated by the sender and is reversible. An unsubscribed contact must explicitly re-opt-in to receive emails again. A suppressed contact can be unsuppressed by the sender when you have a legitimate reason, like a major new product launch you want to give them one more chance to see.
Does suppressing contacts immediately reduce Klaviyo billing costs?
Yes. Klaviyo bills based on active profile count. Suppressed profiles drop out of your active profile count on your next billing cycle, reducing your tier. For a brand with 20,000+ suppressions, this can mean dropping one or two pricing tiers, which for larger lists can save hundreds of dollars per month.
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