Dead subscribers

In the last year, I’ve deleted 80,004 email subscribers from one of the email lists I manage.

That’s more subscribers than are currently on the list.

Why on earth would I do this?

Well if you pay attention to the behavior of your email subscribers, you’ll start to see that there’s a pretty large segment of your list that is completely dead.

They don’t open.

They don’t read.

They don’t click.

They don’t reply.

They sure as heck don’t become clients.

They DO cost you money every month.

And from my conversations with pros in the know, they DO hurt your deliverability.

Meaning that fewer emails arrive in the inboxes of the subscribers that actually want them.

At least that’s the theory.

What if that’s wrong though?

What if there was some wheat in with the chaff that I so callously deleted?

What if I got overzealous and threw away thousands of potential customers in my desire to keep the list clean?

Recently I got to put this to the test—to see first hand whether it’s possible to resurrect these dead subscribers and get them to take action…

Or whether they really are dead and gone forever.

More tomorrow.

Related posts:

  1. You did WHAT?!? A lot of people disagree with my stance on deleting inactive subscribers. I’ll admit it is a bit… Aggressive? Why would you delete people from your list when you worked so hard to get them to subscribe in the first place? And isn’t there a chance that you might make...
  2. Should You Ever Delete ‘Dead’ Email Subscribers? Should you delete “dead” email subscribers from your list? Subscriber Jason is pondering the pros and cons. He asks: What’s your view on culling inactive subscribers from your list? On the one hand, culling reduces costs, and increases open/click rates. But I’ve heard of research done which suggests that inactive...
  3. Dead writer’s A-pile rant Right now I’m hip deep in a mailing. No, not email. Old fashioned, paper-and-ink-and-postage-stamps letters. I’ve got stacks of papers all over my basement office. My fingers are sore from folding paper. I’ve got writer’s cramp from scribbling addresses with a ball point pen. Why go to all this trouble—especially...
  4. The sale to wake the dead Well the attempt to get 80,004 “pruned” email subscribers to reactivate their subscriptions did a whole lotta nothing. What about if we offered them an absolutely killer deal? This effort to reengage the disengaged segment of our list happened to coincide with Black Friday. So we put together a firesale...