Get started with Retention.com's AutoReactivate feature to easily manage and re-engage your dormant contacts in Klaviyo. This guide walks you through each step, helping you leverage automated segmentation for better campaign results.
By the end of this guide, you'll:
Effortlessly generate four segments in Klaviyo directly from your existing unengaged segments, giving you valuable insights into engagement and activity levels.
Learn how to effectively use these new segments in your campaigns to boost engagement.
Table of Contents
What You’ll Need:
An enabled Klaviyo integration in Retention.com's app.
Get Ready to Setup AutoReactivate
In general, the overview of the setup can broken down into 3 main steps.
Step 1: Create an unengaged segment in Klaviyo
Step 2: Activate unengaged segment in the Retention.com app.
Step 3: Manage the new Reactivate segments in Klaviyo.
Step 4: Set up Email Flow for Reactivate Segments in Klaviyo.
Step 5 (recommended): Using AutoReactivate to Suppress Profiles & Clean Your List
Step-by-Step Setup Guide
Step 1: Create an Unengaged Segment in Klaviyo
This unengaged segment will be checked for any activity signals, helping you determine which contacts you are more likely to win-back.
It's important to segment those who show little to no interest in your brand's emails or offerings. It doesn't matter how valuable a contact might have been in the past—if they aren't engaging now, they should be sorted into the unengaged segment.
Follow these steps to create an unengaged segment in Klaviyo:
Navigate to the Lists & Segments tab of your account
Select Create List / Segment > Segment
You can name it, “Unengaged"
Add the following conditions, and select Create.
If someone can or cannot receive marketing > Person can receive email marketing AND
Properties about someone > Created > at least 90 days ago AND
What someone has done (or not done) > Person has Received Email is at least 3 in the last 120 days AND
What someone has done (or not done) > Person has Opened Email zero times in the last 120 days AND
What someone has done (or not done) > Person has Clicked Email zero times in the last 120 days AND
What someone has done (or not done) > Person has Placed Order zero times in the last 180 days
Optional Step: Include Grow Leads in Your Unengaged Segment
If you'd like to include your dormant Grow leads in this segment, you can achieve this by converting the segment into a List.
Open your Retention - Non-openers (Don’t Send to) segment.
Click on Manage Segment and select Convert to List.
Once converted, you can add the list as a condition to the segment above:
OR
If someone is or is not in a list > is in > Retention - Non-openers (Don’t Send to) list.
Step 2: Activate Unengaged Segment in the Retention App
Locate the Automated Reactivate Tab in the Retention App
Open Retention.com.
Go to the Reactivate tab.
Toggle to the AutoReactivate tab located at the top.
Activate AutoReactivate for Segment Insights
In the AutoReactivate tab, select Add New.
Choose your Klaviyo integration from the dropdown (in most cases, this will be the default integration). If you have more than one instance of a Klaviyo integration, choose one.
A new dropdown will appear with all the segments in that Klaviyo account.
Select the segment and click Add.
A new row will be generated with details like the segment name and sync status.
Wait for the sync status to show Completed before proceeding to Step 3. This indicates that your segments are ready for use.
❗️IMPORTANT: You'll need to manually refresh the page to update the sync status. While waiting for the sync to complete, feel free to work on other tasks, as it may take some time depending on the list size. Eg: A list with 20,000 contacts can take up to 5 minutes to process.
Sync Statuses
Pulling Profiles | The app is working to pull profiles into the system. You can leave the page and let it complete the process. |
Processing | The app is working to process the activity status for each of the contacts in your segment. |
Completed | When the sync status is complete, the last synced date will be displayed, and you will find four new segments in your Klaviyo account. Each segment will have contacts sorted accordingly. |
Failed Pulling Profiles | There was an interruption with pulling the profiles from your Klaviyo segment. Try again—if the error persists, contact support for more help. |
Failed Generating File | We experienced an issue while processing the activity status of the contacts in your segment. You may try again or contact support for more help. |
Failed Batch Updating Klaviyo | We we experienced an issue with updating the contacts from your segment. You may try again or contact support for more help. |
Step 3: Manage the New Reactivate Segments
Once the sync is complete, take time to familiarize yourself with the two new segments that were automatically created in your Klaviyo:
Unengaged - Retention Reactivate (1-60 days): Original segment definition AND Reactivate last opened between 1 and 60 days OR Reactivate last clicked between 1 and 60 days AND Reactivate status equals active.
Unengaged - Retention Reactivate (Suppress): These contacts have been identified as potential spam traps. Suppress these email addresses immediately to protect your sender reputation and deliverability.
Not every contact uploaded will return an activity signal. This doesn’t mean they aren’t active. It just means our data providers couldn’t find a signal.
❗️IMPORTANT: Depending on the list size, the segments in Klaviyo may take some time to fully populate with all profiles.
Recommended Contact Ratio for Retention Reactivate Segments
For best results, the Retention Reactivate segment should not exceed 30%–40% of your engaged list size. If the Reactivate segment is larger than 30% of the engaged list or approaches the total active list size, it may indicate an overly broad segment that requires refinement.
To optimize engagement and maintain deliverability, you can:
Reduce the lookback period (e.g., target 60 days instead of 120 days).
Apply additional segmentation criteria, such as filtering by past purchase behavior or high-intent actions.
Prioritize first-party engagement signals over third-party signals whenever available.
If the Reactivate segment is significantly smaller than 30% of the engaged list, it may limit potential re-engagement opportunities, and a broader definition could be tested.
Step 4: Set Up Email Flows or Campaigns in Klaviyo
We have two recommended strategies:
Strategy 1: Add Retention Reactivate (1-60 days) Segment to Incentive-Based Campaigns
Leverage your Retention Reactivate (1-60 days) segment in seasonal campaigns offering significant incentives, such as BFCM or sales events. Include segments in these campaigns to maximize engagement and conversions.
Strategy 2: Trigger Incentive-Based Flows with Retention Reactivate (1-60 days) Segment
It’s your last chance to see if these contacts are still interested. Send a show-stopping deal—if they open and click, they’re shopping. If not, suppress them to keep your list clean and boost deliverability. Simple, effective, and inbox-friendly.
Strategy 2 - How to set up flows triggered by the Retention Reactivate (1-60 days) segment:
Identify High-CTR Content:
For this flow, use high-performing emails featuring show-stopper incentives.
Use your existing Win Back series.
Build the Flow Framework:
Trigger the flow with segment: Original Segment Name - Retention Reactivate (1-60 days).
Create a 2-email flow with each email spaced 2 days apart. Add your high CTR content into the emails.
Add Past Profiles to the Flow:
Once the flow is finished and turned on, add past profiles to capture those who qualified before the flow was activated.
Navigate to Manage Flow in the flow header and select Add Past Profiles.
Choose to have past profiles enter the flow Relative to the flow's start. All recipients begin at the first email.
It’s also suggested to replace dynamic coupons with static coupons and MMS messages are converted to SMS if applicable. Dynamic coupons may expire or duplicate with retroactive flow actions.
Segment-triggered flows will only send to a person once: the first time they are added to the segment.
Recommended Step 5: Using AutoReactivate to Suppress Profiles & Clean Your List
If you're using AutoReactivate as a way to clean your list by suppressing unengaged profiles, here’s how to approach list cleaning after sending flows or campaigns.
Build a new suppression segment:
Campaign senders should send at least 3 campaigns to the AutoReactivate segment. Flow senders will send 2 emails.
Wait at least 14 days after the last campaign or flow email send before suppressing.
Then, create a segment to suppress using the following criteria:
Can receive email marketing AND
Has received at least 2 emails in the last X** days [where flow or campaign name equals respective names] AND
Zero opens in the last X** days AND
Zero clicks in the last X** days AND
Zero placed orders over all time AND
Reactivate status = active
Properties about someone > Created > at least 90 days ago*
* if this was not included in your original segment definition
**X should be long enough to account for all three email sends.
Ongoing Maintenance:
The AutoReactivate app re-runs every 7 days, so all segments will continue updating.
You can manually suppress the suppression segment every 1-4 months as part of your routine list hygiene.
This ensures you maximize re-engagement opportunities while keeping your list clean and deliverability strong.
Ongoing Engagement Strategy
Every 7 days, we automatically rerun the unengaged segment. Any new contacts discovered to be active and engaged in the past 60 days will be added to the respective segment, which will in turn trigger the corresponding flow. Initially, we stagger the flows to manage deliverability, but eventually, all three audiences will be included whenever the unengaged segment is rerun. As it’s likely your audience will be much smaller than the first run.
Strategy 1: Campaigns – New people will appear monthly to be sent via a campaign.
Strategy 2: Dedicated Flows – Each rerun will trigger the dedicated flow for the newly added contacts.
How to Force a Segment Rerun in AutoReactivate
You can manually rerun a segment. This feature allows you to address processing issues or refresh your segments instantly when changes are made.
Here’s how and when to use it:
Recover from errors seamlessly: If a segment fails to process or doesn’t complete properly due to system interruptions, you can now manually trigger a rerun to resolve the issue.
Instant updates for new profiles: Let’s say you modify your chosen segment definition in Klaviyo to include a batch of new profiles. Instead of waiting for the 7-day window, you can rerun the segment immediately to get the latest results.
How to Rerun an AutoReactivate Segment:
Navigate to the AutoReactivate dashboard in your Retention App.
Find the segment you want to rerun.
Click the refresh button.
The system will immediately process the updated segment.
With this update, you have more control, flexibility, and the ability to stay responsive to your audience’s behavior.
Rerun Limit
You can manually rerun a segment once every 24 hours. This limit ensures system stability and helps prevent overuse of the feature.
Using Custom Properties for Filtering
To make filtering contacts easier and allow you to create more customizable segmentation, we've added a custom property called "Reactivate Status" to each contact. This property helps you quickly identify which contacts fall into specific categories:
Active: Contacts with a known activity signal from our network. These signals can go as far back as a couple of years. To create custom segmentation to target activity from specific time frames (ex: last 60 or 90 days), for any active profile we will also include the following:
Reactivate last clicked (month/day/year)
Reactivate last opened (month/day/year)
No Signal: Contacts that have shown no activity signals from our network, helping you decide whether to suppress them or attempt a different approach.
Spam Trap: Contacts identified as potential spam traps, which should be excluded from campaigns to protect your deliverability.
This guide is designed to help you set up and use AutoReactivate effectively. If you have questions or need additional help, feel free to reach out!