Email List Hygiene

Playing "Mom": Monitoring your Subscribers Activity

 Think of your list like a rather large group of your own kids. You should keep an eye on them, pay attention to what they are and are not doing, and make sure their needs are met.

If one of your kids hadn't talked to you in quite sometime, you may reach out and see what is going on with them, what has changed. Same thing with your list subscribers.


It's not uncommon to have 40% of your list be inactive.

However, if you see a higher percentage than the average, and you have totally inactive members on your list for more than a year, you may want to consider sending them a "Re-Engagement Plan".

For the re-engagement plans I have run in the past, I have found great success in running them for lists that are 50% or more inactive. We send them 3 emails over the course of 3 weeks, with varying intensity, and at the 4 week mark we suppress the remaining members who have remained inactive. Each message offers them an opportunity to either unsubscribe, or click to opt back in. You can even ask them to reconfirm their interests or info at that point also.


Be honest in your intensions, and dont promise what you can't live up to. Your subscribers will appreciate your efforts and those who are truly "dead" will drop off - leaving you with a smaller, cleaner, more engaged pool of subscribers.

Where are some other areas I can look to see how "the kids" are?

 Take a look at your subscriber lifecycle. Map it out.  Look for areas you can continue the conversation in a relevant and engaging way. Look for ways to add:

• welcome messages
• win back messages

A welcome message should go out within  24 hours of someone signing up for your emails. You should send them a confirmation message with a restatement of the value of your content and your intended frequency. Consider linking to a preference center and ask them to white list your sending address.

"Double Opt in" is best- this means when someone signs up for your mailings you automatically send them an email asking them to click on a link to activate their subscription. The reason why this is best is that it keeps:

• emails with typos out of your list
• role accounts out of your list (ex.sales@, info@, common spam emails)
• bogus email addresses out of your list

Mind your bounces! Make sure your ESP or someone is handling your bounces for you. Auto suppression is common after 5 bounces with the same address- however some ESP's suppress after 3. If you don't pay attention- not suppressing certain types of bounces can result in damages to your sender reputation- because you can hit:

• Spam Traps: This is an email address that was custom designed by an ESP/ISP for the purposes of catching spammers. They wait for senders to send to it and can tell that those are spammers because obviously no one opted in at this kind of address.
• Honeypots: These are email addresses that have been active for awhile (typically more than 1 year) and the ESP will commandeer it to use it for the purposes of catching spammers who don't keep clean lists. Don't let this be you!