Klaviyo + Shopify: What Does “Accepts Marketing” Mean?

If you use Shopify with Klaviyo, you may see an Accepts Marketing property on customer profiles.

Historically, this property played an important role in determining which Shopify customers were synced to Klaviyo as email subscribers. That is no longer how the integration works.

Since December 2022, Klaviyo has used Shopify’s subscription model to sync email subscribers. The Accepts Marketing property can still sync to Klaviyo as True or False, but it no longer determines whether someone is subscribed to email marketing in Klaviyo.

That distinction matters, because a Klaviyo profile, list member, marketing subscriber and customer with Accepts Marketing = True are not necessarily the same thing.

What is Accepts Marketing in Klaviyo?

Accepts Marketing should not be treated as Klaviyo’s definitive record of a profile’s current email subscription status.

How Accepts Marketing used to work

Before 14 December 2022, Klaviyo’s Shopify subscriber sync relied on Shopify’s Accepts Marketing property.

This could create confusing situations. For example, an existing subscriber could subsequently check out without selecting marketing and have Accepts Marketing = False, despite having separately subscribed through a signup form.

Klaviyo therefore moved the integration to Shopify’s subscription model rather than relying on Accepts Marketing to determine subscription status.

How Shopify email subscribers sync to Klaviyo now

Today, Shopify email subscribers sync to Klaviyo using Shopify’s subscription model, rather than relying on the Accepts Marketing property.

To enable this, go to your Shopify integration settings in Klaviyo and select Sync your Shopify email subscribers to Klaviyo. You then choose the Klaviyo List that Shopify subscribers should be added to.

Klaviyo recommends using your main email List.

1. Email marketing consent at Shopify checkout

Shopify can display an email marketing consent checkbox during checkout.

When a new Shopify customer provides their email address and opts in to email marketing, their subscription can sync to Klaviyo and they can be added to the List selected in your Shopify integration settings.

Importantly, providing an email address to complete a purchase is not the same as subscribing to email marketing.

Shopify lets merchants control where the marketing consent checkbox appears and, in some regions, whether it is preselected. Klaviyo recommends leaving the checkbox unchecked by default to avoid accumulating passive subscribers.

2. Email marketing consent at Shopify sign-in

Shopify can also display an email marketing consent checkbox when customers sign in to their account.

Customers who select the checkbox can be added to Shopify’s email marketing subscribers and, with the Shopify subscriber sync enabled, subsequently synced to the selected Klaviyo List.

3. Shopify newsletter and signup forms

Customers can also subscribe through Shopify signup forms, including newsletter forms on your storefront.

These subscribers can also sync to the Klaviyo List selected in your Shopify integration settings.

What happens with existing subscribers?

There are a couple of important nuances.

If someone is already subscribed in Klaviyo and subsequently checks out without opting in again, Klaviyo does not automatically unsubscribe them.

Likewise, unsubscribing someone in Shopify does not automatically unsubscribe them in Klaviyo.

If someone previously unsubscribed in Klaviyo subsequently opts back in through Shopify checkout, however, they can be resubscribed in Klaviyo.

How you configure opt-in in Klaviyo also affects what happens when someone subscribes through a Klaviyo form. See Single Opt-In vs Double Opt-In →

This is why Accepts Marketing should not be used as a simple proxy for whether someone can or should receive marketing from Klaviyo.

What happens at Shopify checkout?

One of the most important places to understand the distinction between customer identification and marketing consent is Shopify checkout.

A customer may provide their email address because Shopify needs it to process their order and communicate about the transaction. That does not automatically mean they have subscribed to email marketing.

Marketing consent is captured separately through Shopify’s email marketing opt-in.

This distinction matters in Klaviyo because Shopify activity can create or update a Klaviyo profile even when the customer has not subscribed to ongoing marketing.

In other words:

A customer can exist in Klaviyo without being an email subscriber.

That’s why simply finding a profile in Klaviyo — or seeing historical properties such as Accepts Marketing — isn’t enough to determine whether that person should receive marketing.

Why this matters for your Klaviyo account

Once Shopify and Klaviyo have been connected for some time, your account can contain profiles in several different states.

Some may be subscribed to email marketing. Some may have purchased without subscribing. Some may have started checkout but never purchased. Others may have subscribed through a Klaviyo form rather than Shopify.

All of these people can have Klaviyo profiles, but that doesn’t mean they should all be treated the same way.

When deciding who should receive marketing, I recommend looking beyond a single property such as Accepts Marketing and considering:

• how the profile was created;
• what marketing consent has been provided;
• the profile’s current subscription status;
• which Lists the profile belongs to;
• what the customer has actually done; and
• what type of communication you intend to send.

This becomes particularly important as a Klaviyo account grows, because profiles created through your ecommerce integration can also contribute to the number of Active Profiles in your account.

Not sure who all those Active Profiles actually are — or what they’re costing you? See how Klaviyo pricing and Active Profiles work →

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Related Klaviyo help centre documents:

• Sync Shopify Accepts Marketing Customers into a Klaviyo List
• The Signup Form Builder
• Install Klaviyo.js to Publish Signup Forms
• Integrate with Shopify

Related Shopify help centre documents:

• Collecting customer emails
• Customer accounts