In short
- Start a Klaviyo audit with deliverability, because authentication or spam-rate problems undermine every flow and campaign.
- Klaviyo bills on active profiles, so unengaged profiles you never suppress raise your bill while lowering your inbox placement.
- Missing onsite tracking means Added to Cart and Viewed Product flows never fire, which silently caps recovery revenue.
- Flows without exit filters or cross-flow rules over-message customers and push up unsubscribes.
- Judge performance on revenue per recipient and placed order rate rather than open rate, which privacy features have made unreliable.
A Klaviyo audit is a structured check of your deliverability, tracking, flows, lists and reporting to find where email revenue is slipping away. In most Shopify accounts, the biggest leaks are not exotic: unauthenticated sending, missing tracking events, flows without filters and lists full of people who never open.
You can run the checks below yourself in an afternoon. Each one lists what to look at and what a fix looks like.
In short
- Audit deliverability first. If mail lands in spam, nothing else matters.
- Check that onsite tracking is on, or your browse and cart flows never fire.
- Suppress long-term unengaged profiles: they cost money and hurt inbox placement.
- Measure revenue per recipient, not open rate.
Before you start
Pick a comparison window, ideally the last 90 days against the previous 90. Export flow and campaign performance, note your current plan tier and active profile count, and open your Shopify theme editor in another tab. Keep a simple sheet with three columns: issue, estimated impact (high, medium, low) and effort. You will use it to prioritise at the end.
Deliverability leaks
1. Sending from a shared or unauthenticated domain
Check: in Klaviyo's domain settings, confirm you have a branded sending domain and that SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are verified. Use a DNS lookup tool to confirm a DMARC record exists on your root domain.
Why it matters: Gmail's sender guidelines require SPF or DKIM from all senders, and SPF, DKIM and DMARC from anyone sending around 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail accounts. Google's sender FAQ says that from November 2025 non-compliant messages face temporary and permanent rejections. Yahoo has similar rules.
Fix: set up a branded sending domain, publish DMARC starting at p=none with reporting, then tighten once reports look clean.
2. Spam complaints creeping up
Check: connect Google Postmaster Tools and look at your spam rate. Gmail asks senders to stay below 0.3% and recommends staying below 0.1%.
Fix: tighten segments, cut frequency to unengaged people and make the unsubscribe link easy to find. A hidden unsubscribe link just turns into a spam click.
3. No sunset policy
Check: build a segment of profiles who have received at least ten emails in the last 180 days but not opened or clicked any. If it is a large share of your list, you have a problem.
Fix: run a short re-engagement flow, then suppress anyone who still does not respond. This helps inbox placement and, as leak 7 explains, your bill.
Tracking and data leaks
4. Onsite tracking switched off
Check: in the Shopify theme editor, open App embeds and confirm Klaviyo is enabled. In Klaviyo's Shopify integration settings, confirm Track behavioral events is ticked. Then check Analytics, Metrics for recent Viewed Product and Added to Cart events.
Why it matters: Klaviyo's onsite tracking guide explains that Added to Cart, Viewed Collection and Submitted Search need that setting. Theme changes often switch the embed off without anyone noticing.
5. Profiles missing key properties
Check: open ten random recent customer profiles. Do they show location, order count and consent status correctly? Are phone numbers stored in international format?
Fix: repair form field mapping and your checkout consent settings. Bad data breaks segmentation and personalisation later.
6. Signup forms that underperform
Check: review each form's submit rate by device. Look for a single desktop-designed popup that also shows on mobile, forms firing instantly on page load, and exit-intent forms on mobile, where exit intent does not really work.
Fix: build separate mobile and desktop versions, add a short delay or scroll trigger, and consider a second step asking for a WhatsApp number for Indian shoppers.
List and cost leaks
7. Paying for profiles you never email
Klaviyo's billing documentation says any profile that can be emailed counts as active, whatever its consent status, and that suppressed profiles stop counting once processing completes. Accounts that import old lists or collect every checkout email often sit a tier higher than they need to.
Fix: after your sunset flow, suppress dead profiles and check whether you now qualify for a lower tier.
8. Sending every campaign to everyone
Check: look at your last ten campaigns. If most went to the full list, engagement and deliverability both suffer.
Fix: create engaged segments (for example, opened or clicked in the last 60 or 90 days, plus recent purchasers) and send most campaigns to those. Save full-list sends for your biggest moments of the year.
Flow leaks
9. Core flows missing or switched off
Check: confirm you have live welcome, abandoned checkout, abandoned cart (on Added to Cart), browse abandonment, post-purchase, win-back and replenishment flows. Draft or manual-status messages count as missing.
Our guide to the Klaviyo basics covers where to find flow status if you are new to the interface.
10. No exit filters or cross-flow rules
Check: every intent-based flow should include a Placed Order zero times since starting this flow filter. Browse and cart flows should exclude people already in a checkout flow. Smart Sending should be on for marketing messages.
Fix: add the filters, then use a test profile to walk through each path. Many accounts send cart reminders to people who bought an hour earlier.
11. Stale content and broken links
Check: preview every flow email. Look for discontinued products, expired codes, old sale banners, broken images and links to deleted collection pages.
Fix: use dynamic product blocks where possible and set a quarterly reminder to review static content.
Measurement leaks
12. Judging success by opens
Privacy features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection make opens unreliable. If your reports, subject-line tests and engagement segments all lean on opens, you are optimising for noise.
Fix: report on click rate, placed order rate and revenue per recipient. Check your attribution window in Klaviyo's account settings, and compare email-attributed revenue with Shopify's own reports, since each platform uses its own attribution rules. Our guide to Shopify attribution explains why the numbers rarely match.
Prioritising what you find
| Leak | Typical impact | Typical effort |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Unauthenticated domain | High | Low (DNS changes) |
| 2. Rising spam rate | High | Medium |
| 3. No sunset policy | Medium | Low |
| 4. Onsite tracking off | High | Low |
| 5. Missing profile data | Medium | Medium |
| 6. Weak signup forms | Medium | Medium |
| 7. Paying for dead profiles | Medium | Low |
| 8. Full-list campaigns | Medium | Low |
| 9. Missing core flows | High | Medium to high |
| 10. No exit filters | Medium | Low |
| 11. Stale content | Low to medium | Low |
| 12. Open-based reporting | Medium | Low |
Fix the high-impact, low-effort items this week: domain authentication, onsite tracking, exit filters and suppression. Then build missing flows and rework forms over the following month.
A worked example
Suppose a hypothetical brand has 60,000 active profiles, of which 20,000 have not opened or clicked in 180 days. Running a sunset flow and suppressing the non-responders would cut the billable count sharply, send fewer emails to people who ignore them and reduce the chance of spam complaints. The exact saving depends on your plan tier, which you can check in Klaviyo's billing page before and after.
When to bring in help
The checklist above catches most issues. What takes longer is fixing them properly: rewriting flows, rebuilding forms and setting up reporting you can trust. If you want a second pair of eyes, see our Klaviyo email marketing work, or talk to us about ongoing email marketing management for your Shopify store.
Frequently asked questions
A focused self-audit using the checklist in this article takes an afternoon: two to four hours to check settings, flows, forms and reports. A deeper agency audit, including template reviews, segment analysis and a prioritised fix plan, usually takes a few working days depending on how many flows and campaigns the account has.
A Klaviyo user login with Analyst or Manager access is usually enough to review flows, campaigns, segments and reports without being able to send anything. For tracking checks, collaborator access to Shopify helps. You should never need to share your owner password; add the auditor as a separate user and remove them afterwards.
Do a full audit once or twice a year, and a lighter check before peak season, such as late September ahead of Diwali and Black Friday. Also re-audit after big changes: a theme migration, a checkout change, a new sending domain or a jump in list size, since each can break tracking or deliverability without warning.
Klaviyo prices plans by active profiles, meaning any profile that can be emailed, regardless of whether it ever engages. Checkout signups and imports all add profiles. Suppressing long-term unengaged profiles lowers your active count after processing, which can move you to a lower tier. Do this with a clear sunset policy rather than bulk deleting.
Not on its own. Privacy features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection can inflate or distort opens, so open rate is a weak signal. Look at click rate, placed order rate, revenue per recipient, spam complaints and bounce rate instead. A sudden fall in clicks or rise in complaints is a far better warning sign.
