How (and Why) You Should Clean Your Email List for Better Open Rates

If you’re emailing your list regularly (whether that’s once a week or once a month), it’s important to clean your email list every 6 months or so. I’m not talking about getting out a mop and bucket and your best Marigolds. What I mean about ‘cleaning’ an email list is filtering for people who haven’t interacted with your emails for 90+ days, in order to re-engage or unsubscribe them from your list.

The Benefits of Cleaning Your Email List

A clean list scrubbed of inactive contact improves your overall email performance. This includes lower bounce rates (emails can’t be delivered to someone’s inbox because it’s full or their email address is no longer valid) and higher email engagement, because the people on your list are active and eager to open your emails as soon as the notification pops up. This, therefore, increases your sender reputation because it tells email service providers (ESPs) like Gmail and Outlook that your emails are genuine and you’re not a spammer.

So how do I clean my email list?

Filter your inactive subscribers

Go to where your email contacts are stored. Depending on your ESP, this may be called ‘Audience,’ ‘Subscribers’ or ‘Contacts’. Using filters, you want to identify the subscribers who haven’t been active (aka opened an email) for 90 days or more.

Create a separate list/segment/tag (again, names will vary depending on your ESP) called ‘Re-Engagement (Date)’ and add these inactive subscribers to that list, to keep them separate from your active email subscribers. (FYI — adding the current date to the name of this list is helpful for future reference, so you can quickly tell how long ago it was that you last cleaned your list.)

Send a re-engagement email

Low open rates from your inactive contacts don’t necessarily mean that they don’t want to hear from you at all. They may just not be vibing with the content you’re sending at the moment, or experiencing email fatigue. Before you write these subscribers off completely, send them an email to try to re-engage them. You can do this by offering a discount code, a special perk, or access to exclusive content.

Now that you’ve identified the inactive contacts, send them an email with a super straightforward subject line so they know what to expect (eg. ‘We’ve missed you!’ or ‘Do you still want to receive my emails?’). 

As well as offering them a discount or exclusive content, it is also helpful to include a link to your opt-in page in case the reason they’re not opening your emails as much is that they are using a new main email address. And of course, an option to unsubscribe together if they no longer want to receive your emails (give them an option to connect with you on social media if they’d prefer to connect with you there).

Remove inactive contacts after 7-14 days

Give your email some time to breathe. After all, people may be on holiday and need time to catch up with their inbox, or if that’s not their main email address anymore just aren’t checking as regularly. Check back on your re-engagement email after one to two weeks to see who has interacted with it. If anyone has opened it (and not unsubscribed), you can move them back into your main email list and continue sending your juicy, juicy content to them.

Anyone who hasn’t opened the re-engagement email at all, remove them from your list. This may not feel good, but always remember: inactive subscribers never do you any good in the first place.

Congratulations, you’ve cleaned your list! Now watch your open rates go up because only people who actively want to hear from you are subscribed to your emails. Try to repeat this process every 6 months to ensure all of your contacts are as up-to-date as possible.

Key takeaways for email list cleaning:

• Get in the habit of cleaning your email list of inactive subscribers every six months to keep your engagement and open rates high.

• Generally, you want to target people who haven’t interacted with your emails for more than 90 days. However, if you’re a less frequent emailer (ie. you send an email once a month), feel free to change this to 6 months.

• Send them a re-engagement email to try and hook them back in with an irresistable discount or exclusive members content.

• Don’t make it too long - this is not a regular newsletter, so just give them the highlights and the opportunity to unsubscribe (if that’s what they want).

• Add a ‘P.S.’ section after you sign-off in case the reader skimmed through or went straight to the bottom of the page. Summarise the goal of the email and what action you want them to take (ie. sign up using a new email address).

• Don’t forget to unsubscribe anyone who hasn’t opened the email after 7-14 days! Check with your ESP if there is a way it can automatically do this, otherwise mark your calendar to remind yourself to go back and manually remove inactive contacts yourself.

Remember, you only want to clean your list if you’re consistently emailing your subscribers–even if that’s only once a month for now. If you’re not doing that yet, don’t worry! Bookmark this blog post to keep in your back pocket for when you’ve built a sustainable email schedule, and you’re ready to start clearing any inactive subscribers to boost your open rates.

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