You might often hear the advice, “clean your list” or “improve your list hygiene” or “tighten your engagement window” – but what does this mean? List hygiene refers to how proactive you are about removing unengaged recipients, before they unsubscribe or complain. The best email senders have a process for removing subscribers that do not open/click on a particular message stream. Common best practices for list hygiene include the following:
- Daily senders: remove any subscriber that has not opened and/or clicked in the past 30 days.
- Weekly senders: remove any subscriber that has not opened and/or clicked in the past 60 days.
- Biweekly senders: remove any subscriber that has not opened and/or clicked in the past 90 days
- Monthly senders: remove any subscriber that has not opened and/or clicked in the past 180 days
- Quarterly senders: no more than 9 months
- Remove any subscriber older than 12 months permanently from your list as they can become spam traps and harm your reputation.
We understand that removing subscribers from your list can be scary. Another option is to change the frequency of those subscribers and try re-engaging them with special offers or different content in order to bring them back into the regular sending cycle.
It’s a good idea to follow these best practices, because even if no one complains, simply having an unengaged list will harm your reputation in the eyes of a mailbox provider. Learn more about the benefits of engagement.