Dealing with inactive addresses
Abandoned, dormant, unresponsive or inactive email addresses hurt your numbers and can play havoc with your deliverability. These articles have advice on how to identify them and how to get them working again for your email marketing program.
Popular articles
Know when to hold or fold
Outlines the problems associated with email addresses that never respond to your emails and suggests ways to deal with them. Part of the New Email Marketing series.
What are you afraid of?
Urges marketers to drop the obsession with the size of their list, focus more on the quality of subscribers rather than quantity, and cull the deadwood.
Cull your email list for the right reasons
Explains why getting rid of inactive addreses won't boost results in quite the way many would have you believe.
Mailing to old lists
Can email survive a three-year gap?
Identifies the problems that arise when you send out email to a list that hasn't heard from you in a while.
Email address shelf life
Examines the relationship between the time since you sent the last email and the advisability of sending the next one.
How to launch an email program
Suggestions on how you might proceed when sending the first email to a list you're been building for a long time.
Sending your first campaign to an old list?
Discusses the use of reintroduction messages when sending that initial email.
Mail or don't mail?
Looks at the problems associated with mailing to old lists and suggests some tactics to use when sending the first email.
Reactivation campaigns
Shop.org: Effective Reengagment Strategy?
Detailed evaluation of a reactivation campaign, complete with screenshots and highlighted best practices.
Three tips to get them back on board
As well as ideas on reactivating subscribers, the article ends with some thoughts on the kind of practices that might be causing addresses to go inactive in the first place.
Counting the loose change
Weighs up the arguments for and against keeping inactive subscribers on your list, with some tips on how to move forward with the issue.
Savage address cull too drastic?
Discusses a case study where inactives were culled aggressively and identifies some potential improvements to the process used.
12 ways to target inactives
Lists 12 things you can do to get inactive email addresses clicking and responding again.
Start the year right
Suggests some tactics you might use to get the dormant customers on your list back into the active file.
Making bacn not spam
Suggests that maybe some of those inactive addresses are people just waiting for you to send the right emails, and so shouldn't be discounted so easily. Read a commentary on that concept here.
6 tips to win back inactive subscribers
Goes through the reactivation process and describes six ways to rekindle subscriber interest.
Parting isn't such sweet sorrow
Includes stats on the benefits of an address cull, with some tips on re-engaging inactives.
Trimming the deadwood
Explains why and how to cull a list of of those addresses that never respond to (or open) your email.
How to re-engage inactive subscribers
More tactics to use for re-engagement campaigns.
Opt-in renewal campaigns
Best practices
Recommended tactics to use in an email requesting people confirm they're still interested in getting your messages.
It apparently can pay to get permission again
Explains the benefits gained by one non-profit after asking readers of their newsletter to reconfirm their subscription.
Reconfirmation Messages: Clean Up Your List!
Advice on clearing out the "dead" addresses on your permission-based house list and the role of membership reconfirmations.
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Mailing inactive addresses can be big trouble
Article suggests examining your database to understand at what point subscribers become inactive and start reporting you as spam.