I just got done working with a client via Skype. His primary sending list had close to 22,000 contacts actively subscribed. After some debate he agreed that he should remove inactive contacts. We installed and configured the Re-Engagement Addon and set it to check his contact list for contacts that had not opened an email in at least 90 days (the addon allows you to determine the number of days). After the addon ran his list of 22,000 was reduced to close to 4,000.
Some would say that is a bad thing. Now he has soo many fewer people to send content too right?
Here are 5 Reasons Why You Should Remove Inactive Subscribers
- It Saves Money. If you send a high volume of email you are paying per send. You can drastically reduce cost by removing the contacts that are inactive. In the example of the client above he will be spending less than 25% of what he was before each month to send email.
- It will increase your sender reputation. Continuing to send email to a contact who doesn’t ever open it isn’t a good sign in the eyes of the ESPs. They will slowly move your emails to the Junk mail folder and you will see overall deliver-ability rates go down. Another reason it will increase sender reputation is because ESPs monitor inactive email accounts. It is likely that many of your inactive contacts no longer use that email account at all. ESPs will penalize you for sending a large amount of email to inactive accounts.
- Your open rate will dramatically increase. While you may have some emotional trauma from your email list shrinking it should be outweighed by the equal increase you will see in your open and click rates.
- Its good for your brand. If the contact has long since decided to ignore you do you think their affinity to your company and brand is increasing or staying the same each time they see your emails and delete them? It is decreasing with added annoyance over time.
- It isn’t goodbye forever. Instead of deleting them fully you can move in-actives to a new contact list. On occasion when you think you have your strongest content or offers include them in the send… it might just wake someone up out of “un-engaged mode” and get them back into your content.
