Why Your Klaviyo Emails Are Going to Spam (and How to Fix It)

If your Klaviyo emails are landing in spam, the cause is almost never Klaviyo itself. It is usually one of five things: your domain is not authenticated, you are mailing people who stopped caring, your sending volume jumps around, your content triggers filters, or complaints have crept up. Each has a clear fix.

This guide goes through them in the order we check them on an account, so you can find the one that matters for your store.

First, confirm it is actually a spam problem

A falling open rate does not prove spam placement. Since Apple Mail Privacy Protection arrived, open rates are inflated and noisy, so a drop can also mean fewer real opens or a change in how opens are counted.

Better signals are click rate, revenue per recipient, and whether test emails to your own Gmail and Outlook accounts land in the inbox, the Promotions tab or spam. If clicks and revenue per send are falling together, placement is a likely cause.

1. Your domain is not authenticated

Gmail and Yahoo expect bulk senders to authenticate. That means SPF, DKIM and DMARC records for the domain you send from. Without them, mailbox providers have no proof the email is really yours.

Check that your sending domain has all three records, that SPF includes your email platform, and that there is only one SPF record. We explain each in plain terms in our guides to SPF, DKIM and DMARC and email deliverability.

Also send from your own domain, not a free mailbox address. A branded sending domain connected to Klaviyo is the standard setup.

2. You are mailing people who do not engage

This is the most common cause on ecommerce accounts. Over time a list fills with people who stopped opening years ago. Mailbox providers notice when large parts of your audience ignore you, and your reputation slips.

The fix is to segment by engagement. Send your regular campaigns to people who opened or clicked recently, and put the rest through a short re-engagement series. If they still do not respond, stop mailing them. A smaller, engaged list almost always outperforms a larger, tired one.

Our guide to email segmentation covers the segments that matter most.

3. Your sending volume spikes

Mailbox providers like consistency. A store that sends a small weekly campaign and then blasts the whole list on Black Friday looks unusual. So does mailing the entire list after months of silence.

Keep volume steady. Before a big send, warm up by mailing your most engaged segments first, then widen. After a long pause, resume gradually rather than all at once.

4. Your content looks like spam

Content matters less than reputation, but it still counts. Common problems are one giant image with almost no text, broken links, mismatched sender names, and subject lines that shout.

Include real text, keep the image-to-text balance reasonable, make the unsubscribe link easy to find, and keep your sender name consistent. Do not send from a no-reply address, because replies are a positive signal.

5. Complaints are creeping up

Every "mark as spam" click counts against you. Gmail's guidance for bulk senders is to keep spam complaint rates low, with the commonly cited ceiling being 0.3 percent and a target well below 0.1 percent.

Make unsubscribing easy, because someone who cannot find the link will hit the spam button instead. Set expectations at sign-up about how often you will email. And do not mail people who never agreed to hear from you.

A short order of operations

1. Test where your emails actually land in Gmail and Outlook.
2. Verify SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
3. Segment by engagement and stop mailing the long-inactive.
4. Smooth out volume and warm up before big sends.
5. Review content and unsubscribe flow.

Fix them in that order. The first two solve most cases.

When to get help

If you have done the above and placement is still poor, the cause is usually something specific to your account that is hard to see from the outside. That is exactly what our free audit covers: your authentication records, list health and recent performance, reviewed by a person, with the findings sent to you in writing.

Book a free audit or see how our email deliverability service works.