I run a hard "holiday-only" segment scrub in January and pull those people out of abandoned cart flows unless they re-engage. The goal is to strip out low-intent, one-time bargain hunters who hurt sender reputation after December. I do it by building a segment of subscribers who: 1) joined between 1 Nov and 31 Dec, 2) haven't opened or clicked any emails in the last 30-45 days, and 3) haven't bought since that first holiday purchase (or haven't bought at all). Anyone who fits that stays in a quiet "reactivation" path with 1-2 light campaigns, but they're removed from automated abandoned cart flows and heavy promo sends. If they open, click, or buy, they're allowed back into the automations. I've used Klaviyo most for this, leaning on segment filters by join date plus engagement, and flow filters to exclude that "dead holiday" segment from abandoned cart. The core metrics I watch are abandoned cart send volume, open rate, spam complaints, and revenue per recipient (how much revenue each send brings in on average). On a fashion ecommerce brand, once we excluded this cold holiday segment in mid-Jan, abandoned cart open rates went up by around 10-15%, spam complaints dropped to near zero, and revenue per recipient in that flow rose by roughly 15-20% over the next month. The change came from sending fewer emails, to people who still wanted to hear from the brand.
One specific tactic we use in January is holding back holiday-only buyers who haven't opened or clicked any emails in the 60 days leading up to reactivating abandoned cart flows. We use engagement-based segmentation within Klaviyo, relying on open and click activity instead of just purchase history. After the holiday rush, inbox providers get sensitive to old addresses, and abandoned cart emails are often the first to get hit. By taking out contacts with low engagement from cart flows in early January, we cut down on bounce and spam signal risks while keeping our main list healthy. The measurable outcome was a 14 percent jump in abandoned cart deliverability, a 9 percent increase in open rates, and fewer soft bounces within three weeks. This tactic works because January is when engagement basically resets, and cleaning out based on recent behavior protects sender reputation without hurting actual revenue potential.