[FAQ]

Hey everyone,

My email list has been growing for a while now, which is great, but I’m getting concerned about the number of inactive subscribers who never open our emails. I know this can hurt deliverability and engagement rates over time.

What’s the current best practice for how often a business or creator should be cleaning their email list in 2025? Is this something you do quarterly, once a year?

Also, what’s the best and safest process for doing it? Do you just delete people who haven’t opened in a while, or should you try to re-engage them first with some kind of campaign?

Any tips on a good, safe process would be great!

[Jeff Bullas]

Regularly cleaning your email list, often called list hygiene, is a critical practice for maintaining good deliverability, improving your engagement metrics, and, in many cases, reducing the monthly cost of your email marketing service.

There is no single, rigid schedule that fits everyone, but a good rule of thumb for most businesses and creators is to perform a major list cleaning process at least once or twice per year. If you have a very large list, a high volume of new subscribers coming in, or you notice your engagement rates are steadily declining, you might consider doing it more frequently, perhaps every three to six months.

The best way to clean your list is through a methodical, step-by-step process. First, you need to define what an “inactive subscriber” is for your specific context. A common definition is someone who has not opened or clicked any of your emails in a set period, for example, the last 90 or 180 days. The timeframe you choose will often depend on your sending frequency.

Second, once you have created a segment of these inactive subscribers, you should not immediately delete them. The best practice is to first run a re-engagement or “win-back” campaign. This is typically a short series of one to three emails sent only to this inactive segment with the goal of getting them to interact one last time.

Third, your re-engagement emails should use a compelling and direct subject line, something like “Is this goodbye?” or “Do you still want to hear from us?”. The content of the email should remind them of the value you provide and must include a very clear call to action that asks them to confirm they wish to remain on your list, usually by clicking a specific link.

Fourth, after the re-engagement campaign has concluded, you can then confidently remove the subscribers who still did not open or click. These are the subscribers who have demonstrated they are no longer interested, and keeping them on your list is likely harming your sender reputation and skewing your performance metrics.

Fifth, in addition to this major cleaning process, it is also good practice to ensure that any hard bounces – which are emails that fail permanently due to an invalid address – are removed from your list immediately. Most reputable email service providers handle this part automatically.

This process ensures you do not prematurely remove people who might still be interested, while effectively cleaning out the subscribers who are negatively impacting your list’s health. It is a vital part of maintaining a high-performing email marketing program.

Cheers,

Jeff

[Author]

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