How do I launch Klaviyo from scratch for a young company with no email history?
Matthew Whittaker
Co-founder & CTO, Suped
Published 8 Aug 2025
Updated 17 Aug 2025
8 min read
Launching Klaviyo for a young company that has virtually no email history and a dormant account can feel like starting from scratch, which, in many ways, it is. Unlike migrating from another Email Service Provider (ESP), you don't have existing engagement data to lean on. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity to build a robust email program with strong deliverability from day one.
The good news is that Klaviyo is designed to help e-commerce businesses scale, offering a suite of features that can support rapid growth. Your primary focus should be on establishing a healthy sending reputation from the ground up. This involves careful attention to technical setup, audience segmentation, and content strategy to ensure your emails consistently reach the inbox.
My goal here is to guide you through the process, covering the essential steps from initial setup to launching your first campaigns, and ensuring you lay a solid foundation for long-term email marketing success without compromising your brand’s deliverability.
Laying the groundwork for success
One of the first critical steps is to fully integrate your e-commerce platform with Klaviyo. This ensures that valuable data, such as purchase history and browsing behavior, starts flowing into your Klaviyo account. Even if you have minimal past email engagement, transactional data provides a rich source of information for segmenting your audience and personalizing future campaigns. This data will be the backbone of your strategy, allowing you to create relevant and engaging content from the start.
Next, implement a custom sending domain within Klaviyo. While it might seem like a small detail, this is fundamental for proper email authentication. When your emails authenticate as coming from your domain, rather than Klaviyo’s shared domain, it significantly boosts your sender reputation. This is a vital step that can directly impact your inbox placement and overall improve Klaviyo deliverability. If you're using a relatively new domain, allow it to age a bit before setting up a dedicated sending domain, as a very young domain could potentially cause initial deliverability issues and send emails to the spam folder. For detailed instructions, you can refer to how to setup a subdomain for email sending with Klaviyo.
Even on a shared IP, where Klaviyo manages the overall IP reputation, your domain's sending reputation is still paramount. Since you’re starting with no email history, your domain doesn't have an established reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). While shared IPs often mitigate the need for aggressive IP warming, a gradual ramp-up of your sending volume is still advisable for your domain. Understand the nuances of IP warming when launching a new email program with a zero-based list on a shared IP to ensure a smooth start.
Strategic warming and initial campaigns
With no historical email engagement to build from, you'll need to strategically warm up your new sending program. The best place to start is with your most engaged audience members, which for a young company often means recent first-time customers or those who have recently interacted via transactional SMS. These individuals are most likely to open and engage with your emails, helping to build positive sending signals.
Begin by segmenting your list to include only these recent, highly engaged contacts. If you have, for example, 300 customers over the last 30 days, consider starting with smaller send volumes, perhaps 50, then 100, then 150 emails, gradually increasing over the first few weeks. This controlled ramp-up allows mailbox providers to see consistent, positive engagement from your domain, which is crucial for building a good sender reputation. Learn more about warming up a new client's email list in Klaviyo.
Your very first email campaigns should focus on high-value, high-engagement content. A simple permission reminder is a great way to re-establish consent and encourage engagement, especially if your list has been dormant. Ensure a very prominent opt-out link is included, and consider asking subscribers to reply or whitelist your email address. This direct interaction further signals positive intent to ISPs.
Don't delay getting campaigns out. Every day you don't send emails is a day of guaranteed non-engagement. While you work on integrating your website fully for post-purchase flows, you can still launch initial campaigns to your existing engaged segments. The priority is to start generating positive engagement signals as soon as possible, even if it's a small volume.
Building out essential flows and monitoring
As you build initial engagement, prioritize setting up essential automated flows. These are the workhorses of Klaviyo and will nurture your subscribers automatically. Key flows include a welcome series, abandoned cart reminders, browse abandonment, and post-purchase follow-ups. Many of these can be quickly set up using Klaviyo’s pre-built templates, allowing you to build a welcome flow from scratch or adapt existing ones.
Monitoring your email deliverability is critical, especially when starting fresh. Sign up for Google Postmaster Tools to keep an eye on your domain’s reputation and feedback loop data. This provides invaluable insights into how mailbox providers perceive your sending practices and helps identify any potential issues early on. Pay attention to spam complaints, IP and domain reputation, and delivery errors.
Beyond Google, regularly check your sending metrics within Klaviyo itself. Look at open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. These engagement metrics are direct indicators of your audience’s reception to your emails and serve as early warnings for potential deliverability issues. Consistent positive engagement reinforces a good reputation, while spikes in complaints or unsubscribes suggest a need for adjustment in your content or targeting.
Key Klaviyo pre-launch checklist
Integrate ecommerce: Connect your store to Klaviyo to sync customer data.
Set up custom sending domain: Authenticate your domain for improved reputation and deliverability.
Segment initial audience: Focus on recent, engaged customers for initial sends.
Plan initial campaigns: Start with high-engagement messages like welcome flows.
Sustaining deliverability and growth
For sustained deliverability, a clean and engaged email list is paramount. Even with a young company, it's easy for lists to accumulate unengaged contacts or even spam traps if not properly managed. Regularly segment your list based on engagement, and consider sunsetting subscribers who haven't opened or clicked in a significant period. This practice keeps your list healthy and improves your overall sender reputation over time, preventing issues like being placed on an email blocklist or blacklist.
As your program matures, revisit your email authentication setup. Ensuring your domain has properly configured DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records is crucial for preventing spoofing and improving deliverability. These technical configurations tell mailbox providers that your emails are legitimate and can be trusted. While Klaviyo handles much of this, a custom sending domain allows for stronger alignment and better control.
Finally, continuously optimize your email content and sending strategy. A/B test subject lines, content, send times, and segmentation. Analyze what resonates most with your audience and iterate. Personalization, clear calls to action, and mobile-friendly designs are not just best practices, they are essential for driving engagement and reinforcing positive sender reputation signals. Remember, even with a young company, you can achieve excellent email deliverability with a thoughtful and consistent approach.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Always integrate your e-commerce platform with Klaviyo as the very first step.
Start sending emails to your most engaged and recent customer segments.
Implement a custom sending domain early for better authentication and brand alignment.
Common pitfalls
Trying to send to an entire unengaged list immediately, leading to high bounce rates.
Neglecting to set up custom sending domains, which impacts deliverability and trust.
Underestimating the importance of gradual volume increase for new sending domains.
Expert tips
Focus on content that encourages high engagement from your initial sends, like permission reminders.
Even with shared IPs, domain reputation is built through consistent positive interaction.
Consider a simple campaign first to get email traffic flowing and build momentum.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that implementing a custom sending domain fully, so mail authenticates as your brand and not Klaviyo, is crucial for deliverability success.
2023-09-29 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that even on shared IPs, gradually warming up your sending volume over the first few weeks is important, avoiding large, sudden sends.
2023-09-29 - Email Geeks
Key takeaways for launching Klaviyo
Launching Klaviyo from scratch for a young company with no email history is a unique opportunity to build a high-performing email program based on best practices from day one. By prioritizing technical setup, strategic audience segmentation, and careful volume ramp-up, you can establish a strong sender reputation that ensures your emails land in the inbox.
Remember, consistency and active monitoring are key. Embrace the iterative process of testing and optimization, and you’ll find that Klaviyo can quickly become a powerful engine for your company’s growth. With a methodical approach, your email program can be fully operational and highly effective within a few months, driving significant engagement and revenue.
