Maintaining a clean and engaged subscriber list is vital for the success of your email marketing. Over time, email lists can accumulate inactive subscribers and invalid addresses, which can negatively impact your inbox placement and overall email performance. Regularly reviewing and updating your subscriber list ensures that your messages reach the most interested and active audience, leading to higher engagement and better results.
For more context on email marketing best practices, see: Email Marketing Best Practices
Removing Inactive Subscribers
Over time, some subscribers may stop engaging with your emails. Continuing to send messages to these inactive contacts can harm your sender reputation and reduce overall engagement rates. It’s best to regularly take steps to remove inactive subscribers to maintain your list.
Timeframe
The amount of time that passes for a given subscriber to stop being an asset and start becoming a problem will vary depending on your list and how frequently you’re sending. In most cases, a good cut off point is six months.
If your list deals with seasonal products or if six months just isn't appropriate for your business, 12 months is strongly recommended as a hard cap. After a year of no opens, it is very likely that either the email address was abandoned or the subscriber now groups your messages with their unread spam.
Step By Step Instructions
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Click the "Subscribers" tab and select " Subscribers ."
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Click the "Search Option" drop-down menu.
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Click "No Opens" from the "Search Option" options.
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Click the blank field to the right of No Opens and choose the date or timeframe you'd like to search by. This will allow you to find all your subscribers who have not opened a message since that date. For example, if you want to see who hasn't opened your messages in the last 30 days, choose a date 30 days ago. You can also type "30 days ago" in the search bar.
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Include another search term by clicking the + button. This field would be Date Added > date is on or before > the same date--this will ensure that newer subscribers who may just not have gotten to your messages yet won't be lumped together with the rest of the inactives.
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Note: For time frames beyond "3 months" or "90 days" you will be able to either select your intended date from the popup calendar, type in a specific date in mm/dd/yyyy or type in the number of days.
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or:
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Click the Search button, then scroll down to see the list of subscribers who haven't opened your messages since the date you chose.
To delete these subscribers, check the box to the left of "Name" at the top of your list of subscribers. This will mark all subscribers that are currently displayed. Select "Actions," followed by "Delete" in the drop-down menu that appears. Your subscribers will be deleted shortly after.
Note: You'll then be asked to confirm your decision to delete these subscribers. Click "Delete" to confirm this action. Deleting subscribers will completely remove them from your list. They will no longer receive emails from you, and all past activity will be gone.
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If you have multiple pages of subscribers, you can repeat this process to remove them all. If you have a larger list of subscribers, you can export the subscriber search and paste the subscriber email addresses into the bulk unsubscribe tool to unsubscribe them in bulk.
Undeliverable Subscribers
When a mail server rejects an email as undeliverable a notice is sent back to the server that sent the email. It is required that the email server be configured to properly handle these "undeliverables" and unsubscribe a recipient if their email address continues to be undeliverable over a period of time.
Since AWeber has an automated process in place to handle undeliverable subscribers, these undeliverable subscribers typically will not need to be manually managed within your AWeber account.
How AWeber Handles Undeliverable Subscribers
When an email address is undeliverable due to a bounce, the entry is flagged in your account under the subscriber's profile. You can also view all bounces for the list from the "Undeliverable" filter on the " Subscribers " page.
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AWeber will continue to send messages to a subscriber until they have been undeliverable three or more times in a 6-month period. To reduce false positive, there is a minimum wait of 7 days from the 1st bounce recorded before unsubscribing. That means if a subscriber has bounced 3 or more times in that 6-month period, they will be unsubscribed on the next bounce after the 7 day window is concluded.
This process will reset every 6 months after a bounce is recorded. So, if a subscriber is undeliverable three times in a 7-day period and does not bounce for another 6 months, they will not be unsubscribed.
After the 6 month period has ended, this process resets and a subscriber will need to be undeliverable more than three times in a 6-month period to be unsubscribed.