Resend a Klaviyo Campaign to Non-Openers: A Method for BFCM

During Black Friday, a launch campaign that part of your list missed is tempting to follow up on. Klaviyo offers three distinct mechanisms: an automatic follow-up email, a manual resend to a segment of non-openers, and the resend of a message to a single person. Each has its limits, and none replaces some thinking about who the recipients should be.

TL;DR. The automatic follow-up email exists only for email campaigns, requires a deliverability score above 50, and targets only profiles that opened or clicked in the last 30, 60 or 90 days. The delay runs from 2 days (48 hours) to 30 days. It is not available with an A/B test. In our view, the automatic follow-up is only worth using during BFCM if the offer is still valid 48 hours later.

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Option 1: the automatic follow-up email

The setting is called Add a follow-up email. It sits at the review step of the campaign wizard, and is only available for a new campaign or one that has not been sent (Klaviyo, add a follow-up email to non-openers).

The conditions

• The account must have a deliverability score above 50, which you can check under Analytics, Deliverability, Email, Score. Below that, the setting is disabled with the message "Disable due to poor deliverability score", without preventing the campaign itself from being sent.
• The follow-up can only target profiles that opened or clicked other emails from your account within the last 30 to 90 days. The page warns that sending to non-openers who have never engaged, or who have not engaged for more than 90 days, can harm sender reputation and send emails to spam.
• It is reserved for email campaigns. SMS opens cannot be detected, and the page generally advises against resending SMS campaigns.
• It is not possible when the campaign is an A/B test.

The settings

1. At the review step, turn on Add a follow-up email in the sidebar.
2. Enter a new subject line. The content of the follow-up stays identical to the original campaign, and the page stresses that you should change the subject line to try something different with non-openers.
3. Choose which profiles to follow up with based on their engagement: opened or clicked in the last 30, 60 or 90 days.
4. Set a delay in days or hours. The minimum is 2 days or 48 hours, the maximum 30 days.
5. Check the fields: the follow-up appears in the campaign's calendar, next to the original send.
6. Click Schedule or send and choose the date and time of the first send.

As long as the campaign has not gone out, you can cancel or edit the follow-up from the campaigns tab: the three-dot menu on the follow-up card offers Cancel or Edit, and you can change the subject line, the segment or the delay. Cancelling the follow-up does not cancel the original campaign.

What this changes for a BFCM

The 48-hour minimum delay shapes the calendar. A campaign sent on Friday morning cannot be automatically followed up on Friday evening: the first possible follow-up lands on Sunday. In our view, Black Friday therefore forces a choice between two approaches: an automatic follow-up for an offer that runs until Cyber Monday, or a manual resend, which has no minimum delay, for a short message. Our BFCM send calendar places these follow-ups within the week.

One remark that is not in Klaviyo's documentation, and that we make in our view: part of the opens are counted by Apple's privacy protections, so "non-opener" means a profile whose open was not recorded, not necessarily a profile that did not read the message. Our article on Apple Mail Privacy Protection goes into this bias in detail.

Option 2: the manual resend to a segment

The page recommends the automatic option, but describes a manual method for targeting non-openers. You first create a segment with three conditions joined by "and": the profile received the email at least once over all time, where the campaign name equals that of the campaign concerned; it opened the email zero times; it clicked zero times. You can add an engagement condition, for example opened an email in the last 60 days.

Next, you find the original campaign, three-dot menu, Clone, then Clone to this account while selecting the segment. You then follow the steps for creating the content and sending.

Two points of attention from the page:

• If the resend happens within the Smart Sending window, you need to turn off the option that skips recently contacted profiles. Otherwise, the profiles concerned are skipped. Our article on Smart Sending details how the timer works.
• If the campaign is scheduled, you need to select the Determine recipients at send time option, so that the segment is evaluated at the moment of sending rather than at the moment of scheduling.

This second point refers to an account setting. By default, a campaign's recipients are determined at the scheduled time (Scheduled time): Klaviyo then takes a snapshot of the lists or segments at the moment you click Schedule, and people added afterwards do not receive the campaign. With Send time, the snapshot is taken just before the send. Only owners, admins and managers can change this account setting, under Settings, Account, Messaging. The page warns that the Send time mode can use more sends than expected if your lists have grown a lot, trigger an automatic plan upgrade or require a plan change (Klaviyo, change when campaign recipients are determined). For SMS, mobile messaging spend can exceed the estimate, particularly on a multinational account where rates vary by country.

Option 3: resend a message to a single person

Klaviyo also lets you resend a flow or campaign email to a single recipient (Klaviyo, resend emails). There are two paths: from the profile's inbox, via Messages then the Sent or Skipped tab and Resend, or from the message's Recipient Activity view. The use cases given are a customer who cannot find the email with their welcome code, or a person skipped by Smart Sending.

Limits to know:

• It only works for email, not for SMS or MMS.
• Only messages marked sent or skipped can be resent: a scheduled or cancelled message cannot.
• The resend happens one message at a time.
• The preview of the sent message, like the resent message, displays dynamic content based on the account's current data, not the data from the original send.
• A flow resend applies no flow filters and goes out immediately. Smart Sending is not applied to a resend either, whether for a flow or a campaign.
• Resending a previously skipped message does not change the record of the original skip: the profile does not move from Skipped to Recipients. The resent email does appear in the profile's activity feed, however, and the opens and clicks that follow are tracked.

This option suits individual customer service requests during BFCM, not a mass follow-up.

Which option for which case

This table is a Deliver recommendation, based on the limits described above.

Our article on the BFCM send calendar and the one on audiences and exclusions help you decide which segments should be left out of any follow-up, such as people who have already purchased.

Checklist before BFCM

These points are Deliver recommendations.

1. The deliverability score is checked before the week of the event.
2. The choice between automatic follow-up and manual resend is made for each key campaign in the calendar.
3. The follow-up subject lines are written alongside the original emails, not on the day itself.
4. The follow-up segment excludes people who have already purchased during the event.
5. The Smart Sending window is checked before any manual resend.
6. The account setting for determining recipients is known, along with its possible effect on send volume.

FAQ

What is the minimum delay for an automatic follow-up email?

2 days, or 48 hours. The maximum is 30 days.

Does the automatic follow-up work with an A/B test?

No. You cannot automatically follow up a campaign that is an A/B test.

Can you follow up with non-openers by SMS?

Not with this feature: SMS opens cannot be detected and the page generally advises against resending SMS campaigns.

Why is my follow-up option greyed out?

If the message "Disable due to poor deliverability score" appears, the account's deliverability score is too low (the page requires a score above 50). The sending of the campaign is not affected.

Does an individual resend apply Smart Sending?

No. A resend does not apply Smart Sending, and a flow resend does not apply the flow's filters either.

Want an outside look at your follow-up strategy? We run Q4 readiness audits, or you can talk directly with the Deliver team.