Reducing your bounce rate in Klaviyo

Written for ecommerce brands on Shopify and similar platforms.

Klaviyo
Their stated thresholdKlaviyo's guidance puts a healthy bounce rate under 2% and treats anything sustained above that as a deliverability risk worth acting on.
What happens if you cross itKlaviyo warns through its deliverability reporting and can throttle or review accounts with sustained problems. Their model is closer to guidance and monitoring than the abrupt suspension Mailchimp applies.
Where the bounce data livesAnalytics, then Deliverability, gives the trend across sends. Per-campaign numbers sit in the campaign's Recipient Activity, and suppressed profiles are under Profiles with a Suppressed filter and a reason.
How bounces are classifiedKlaviyo suppresses on hard bounce and records a suppression reason on the profile, so you can tell a bounce suppression from an unsubscribe or a manual exclusion at a glance.

Bringing the rate down

Each step is an action inside Klaviyo, in the order worth taking them.

  1. Open Deliverability and find when it changed

    Analytics, Deliverability shows bounce rate over time. A step change on one date usually points at an integration sync or a list import rather than at gradual decay.

  2. Filter profiles by suppression reason

    Profiles filtered to suppressed with a bounce reason gives you the actual addresses. Check the source property to see whether they came from checkout, a form or an import.

  3. Fix the checkout capture if that is the source

    Ecommerce checkout is the commonest source of junk addresses in Klaviyo, because a customer mistyping at checkout still completes an order and still syncs to you.

  4. Build an engaged segment and send to that first

    A segment of profiles that opened or clicked in ninety days gives you clean sends while you repair the rest. Klaviyo's segment builder makes this a two-minute job.

  5. Add a sunset flow for the silent profiles

    Klaviyo's flows can move profiles that have not engaged in six months out of your sending segments automatically, which stops the problem returning.

The mistake people make here

A bounce report mixes two causes that need opposite responses: addresses that do not exist, and receivers refusing mail they could have delivered. The first is fixed by checking the list. The second is a sending problem and no amount of cleaning will move it.

Questions people ask

What bounce rate does Klaviyo consider healthy?

Their guidance points at under 2%. Sustained rates above that appear as a warning in deliverability reporting before they become a real placement problem.

Does Klaviyo remove bounced profiles automatically?

It suppresses them, which stops sending while keeping the profile and its order history. The suppression reason is recorded on the profile.

Why did my bounce rate jump after connecting Shopify?

Because checkout addresses sync straight in, including typos from customers who completed an order. That capture point is the usual cause of a step change in a Klaviyo account.

Check the list before the next send

100 free checks a month, no card, and the addresses nobody can resolve come back labeled rather than guessed at.