When to Unsubscribe Contacts from your Email Marketing List

Why Remove Contacts?

I often come across people bragging about the size of their email list and saying how important it is to have a retained source of traffic (i.e. an email list). They are right – having a list of receptive prospects and customers at the ready is very valuable; BUT having a list of inactive subscribers can in some cases be more costly than profitable. Thus you need to clean your list by removing inactive subscribers, which can also be done automatically.

Here are some reasons to remove subscribers from your list:

#1 – They Don’t Open Any Emails!
Why have someone on your email list if they never even open or read your emails? I remove subscribers who open too few emails.

#2 – They Never Interact
This is a subjective area, but depending on your business, you might choose to remove subscribers who open but don’t click on any link ever. If the subscriber never does anything you want them to, then what value are they returning?


Something to Remember

Remember that people also die, change emails, or move on after you solve a problem for them, and keeping inactive emails in your list costs money. Getting the benefits of email marketing requires a clean email list.


How to Remove the Deadwood

Cleaning your list is simple. I create a segment only with people who:

Anyone moved to this segment can automatically be unsubscribed.


Thanks for Reading

I hope you understand how email marketing is all about quality, not quantity.

You might want to grab a copy of the Free Email Marketing Cheat Sheet to discover further ways email marketing can help your business.

If you’ve found these email marketing list cleaning tips helpful, please share this page so other email marketers can see them.

Cheers!

Nick

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