Or as we call it… purge.
For some reason, many newsletter writers and email marketers are obsessed with total subscriber numbers.
We have to be the party-poopers here and say that if you don’t have an automation to clean-up your email list from new subscribers who are inactive, your “growth” is just an illusion.
Why is removing inactive subscribers important?
When you don’t try to re-engage, and then purge, new inactive subscribers, you will start having deliverability issues.
This becomes a slippery slope – the fewer subscribers engage with your newsletter, the more your emails will be placed in Promotions or Spam.
And then again. And again.
Until at one point, you swim in the mediocrity of 15% open rates that come just from corporate firewalls and Apple Mail Privacy users.
If you re-engage and purge new inactive subscribers, your growth will be real.
Any new subscriber is someone actually reading your emails. And your engagement improves. And so does your deliverability.
What if cleaning your list from new inactives means you shrink?
Simple – you have to improve your emails.
That’s some tough-love we think many newsletter writers need to hear, especially smaller ones who cannot afford enterprise solutions that might help their deliverability.