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Audience Hygiene

Maintaining clean, engaged contact lists is critical to long-term deliverability. Sending to unengaged or dead addresses degrades your domain reputation and drives your emails into the spam folder.

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The Engagement Trap

Mailbox providers (like Gmail and Outlook) track how recipients interact with your emails:
  • Positive Signals: Opening, clicking links, replying, moving messages from Spam to Inbox.
  • Negative Signals: Leaving messages unopened, deleting without reading, marking as spam.
If you continue blasting thousands of unengaged contacts who haven’t opened an email in 6 months, mailbox providers begin classifying your entire sending stream as unwanted bulk mail.

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Implementing a Sunset Policy

A sunset policy automatically removes or isolates contacts who stop interacting with your emails:
  1. Active (0–90 days): Send all standard campaigns and newsletters.
  2. At Risk (90–180 days): Reduce frequency. Send targeted re-engagement campaigns with strong calls to action.
  3. Sunset (180+ days inactive): Stop sending regular broadcasts. If they do not respond to a final opt-in confirmation, archive or delete the contact from your audience.

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List Cleaning Checklist

  • Never Buy Email Lists: Purchased lists contain recycled spam traps and bad addresses that will immediately get your domain blocklisted.
  • Validate at Signup: Use front-end email format validation and verification to catch typos before contacts are added to your database.
  • Respect Unsubscribes Instantly: Ensure users can easily opt out with one click.