Deleting email subscribers will actually increase your total sales.
Year our newsletter list reached forty thousand subscribers but our open rates fell below twelve percent. I was scared to delete anyone because I believed a bigger list automatically meant possible buyers.
I finally made the decision. Removed twelve thousand people who had not opened a single email in six months. Email providers like Gmail monitor how many people ignore your messages to determine if you belong in the spam folder.
The week after the cleanup our open rates went up to twenty eight percent. Importantly our real revenue from the weekly Tuesday broadcast rose by fifteen percent compared to the previous month.
Sending emails to people who never open them hurts your sender reputation. It literally hides your content, from the subscribers who actually want to buy your products.
Stop paying your email software provider for weight. Keep your list clean by running an automated re- campaign every single quarter and deleting anyone who ignores it.
You will make money by focusing only on your engaged audience. How often do you clean your subscriber lists. Did you notice a deliverability bump when you finally did it?
Replies
The 15% revenue increase caught my attention. I wonder how much came from improved deliverability and how much came from having a smaller, more engaged audience.
This is a good reminder that list size can become a vanity metric. I’d rather pay for fewer subscribers who actually read and buy than keep paying to store thousands of inactive contacts.
@suveerkothari I’d be careful about assuming inactivity alone damages sender reputation in every case. Email providers use multiple signals, but regularly mailing unengaged contacts can still be a warning sign worth investigating.
how did you measure the revenue increase against the previous month? I’d be interested in whether you controlled for promotions, seasonal changes, and differences in the products being featured.