Clean and Re-Warm Email Subscriber Lists

Big email lists ≠ better results. In fact, a bigger list can kill your deliverability. Inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook don’t care how many subscribers you have. They care how many people engage. That means opening, clicking, and replying. And if half your list is ignoring you, Gmail starts assuming everyone will. So your deliverability drops. Even your best emails land in spam or promotions. You’re not being punished for sending too much. You’re being penalised for sending to the wrong people. That’s why regular list cleaning isn’t optional. It’s how you protect your sender reputation. Run this simple cleanup: → Segment no-opens from the last 90–180 days → Send a 2-part re-engagement campaign → Delete the rest without guilt What happens next: → Your emails hit more primary inboxes → Open rates climb → Clicks reflect real interest Keep it that way by: → Sending consistent value outside of launches → Set clear expectations in your welcome sequence → Running a quarterly list cleanup Because a smaller list of people who actually want to hear from you will always outperform a big one that doesn’t. When did you last remove cold subscribers from your list? If it’s been a while, take this as your sign.

We cut 1,145 subscribers yesterday. What every founder should know about building a newsletter. When we launched THE ELEVATE GROUP newsletter in March 2024, we were obsessed with growth. We promoted it at every event, on every stage, in every room. It took us a year to reach >2,000 subscribers. And then the graph stopped moving. Flat as a pancake. Jingjin Liu and I looked at each other and said, “Is it us, or is it them?” So we pivoted. • We removed our newsletter from LinkedIn. • We started creating highly valuable lead magnets. • Plugged the newsletter sign-up on our LinkedIn posts that went viral. • Created high-value monthly events. • That change accelerated our list to 5,000+ within months. At first, it felt like success. The number kept climbing. The uncomfortable truth? The easier decision is always to keep adding. Vanity metrics give you a high. You tell yourself you’re growing when in reality you might just be bloating. We fell into that trap. So, the last 2 months, we asked a harder question: WHO is actually reading? And are they our ideal customer profile (ICP)? When we dug into the data, we discovered 1,145 subscribers who had never opened a single email. Not one. We made the decision to remove them. Here’s how we approached it: – Identified all subscribers with zero opens since sign-up. – Sent them an email with a one-click option to stay. – Sent a final reminder five days later. – Removed 1,145 who didn’t respond. What we learned: 1. Vanity vs. value. Growth feels good, but engagement is the only real measure. Chasing numbers distracted us in the early days. Now we chase quality numbers. 2. Lead magnets drive sign-ups, not loyalty. They bring people in, but they don’t keep people. Retention requires consistent value. 3. Data is non-negotiable. Without regular audits, you can’t separate volume from value. 4. Curation compounds. Removing inactive readers improves deliverability, boosts open rates, and sharpens your ICP. 5. Every dollar counts. Cleaning our list dropped our Kit cost from USD119/month to USD89/month. That’s $360 saved annually - capital we can reinvest elsewhere.     What we’ll do next: – Keep building lead magnets that solve real problems. – Audit the list quarterly, not annually. – Treat engagement as the growth metric, not volume. – Remember that fewer engaged readers > more silent ones. Scaling a newsletter is like scaling a company. The easiest decision is to chase numbers. The harder - but smarter - decision is to curate for depth. We see too many solopreneurs making avoidable mistakes. And we wish we could help. So Jingjin and I are testing a one-off event. Your questions, your situation, unfiltered advice. Not inspiration. Interrogation. Business lens only: Money and Outcomes. Join the waitlist here - https://lnkd.in/gj5KbyUB We’ll only run it if there’s demand. P.S. What’s one vanity metric you’ve chased before you learned better?

“Email less to avoid unsubscribes.” How many times have you heard that advice? Here’s the reality: It’s not about sending fewer emails. It’s about sending the right emails. I worked with a client who cut their email volume by 40% after a deliverability scare. Their engagement improved briefly, but revenue plummeted. What they missed was this: volume wasn’t the issue. Their list quality was. We implemented a simple shift: - We aggressively cleaned their list, removing unengaged and invalid contacts. - We doubled down on their high-intent segments, sending more personalized emails to the people who actually cared. Result? Revenue jumped 25%, and their unsubscribe rate stayed flat. Don’t email less, clean more. Then, email the right people as much as they can handle.

Your email list isn’t a trophy. It’s a tool. Bigger isn’t always better. If no one’s opening your emails, what’s the point? A bloated list drags your entire campaign down. More spam complaints. Lower open rates. Emails getting buried before they’re even seen. Yet brands hold on. They fear cutting subscribers will hurt them. But the real damage comes from keeping dead weight. One client purged their list. Removed inactive subscribers. Cleaned out the ghosts. Their open rates jumped 15%. Deliverability improved. More real customers saw their emails. This isn’t about shrinking your audience. It’s about making sure the right people stay. Here’s what works. → Remove inactive subscribers regularly. → Segment by engagement levels. → Run re-engagement campaigns before saying goodbye. A smaller, healthier list drives more conversions. And that’s what actually matters. Stop hoarding. Start optimizing. ♻️ Repost if engagement > vanity metrics. ✚ Follow Oliver Allen for expert advice on authentic and transparent marketing strategies. I’m on a mission to set a new standard of honesty in marketing and help brands achieve clarity and results.

Poor email deliverability creates an invisible wall between you and your customers. We see this scenario play out too often: → A marketing team creates amazing content → The brand sends it out → Emails go to spam or bounce → Sales opportunities vanish That’s why you *must* make email deliverability your top priority. Here’s how: ↓ 1. Track key metrics daily Leverage your ESP to monitor: → Unsubscribe rates → Bounces → Domain health When numbers spike, find out why— Was it a specific campaign? A particular segment? Pinpoint the issue and fix it. 2. Segment strategically Ditch the “one size fits all” approach— Break your list into targeted groups: → New subscribers → Frequent buyers → People who browse but don’t buy → Fans of certain products → Engagement tracks based on varying levels of engagement …then write emails that fit each one. A skincare brand we work with split their list by skin type— Oily skin folks got different product recs than dry skin types… …and opens jumped 25% in just one month. 3. Keep your list clean Get rid of… → People who never open emails → Emails that bounce → Inactive contacts A small, engaged list beats a big, quiet one— This helps you avoid the dreaded Gmail promotions tab (once you get in, it’s hard to get out!). 4. Make it personal Use what you know about each subscriber to… → Recommend products they’ll like → Send emails when they’re likely to read → Create content based on their likes and needs Make your emails feel like they’re just for them. These elements work together: → Segmentation boosts relevance → Monitoring catches issues early → A clean list helps emails get through → Personal touches keep people reading The goal isn't more emails— It’s *better* emails that actually get in the hands of consumers when they are most likely to buy Quality content + the right consumers + engaged readers… …that's the formula for turning emails into revenue.

A client once came to me frustrated. They had tens of thousands of dormant subscribers — people who hadn’t opened an email in months. So, they did what most marketers do... They launched a re-engagement campaign. Subject lines were optimized. Timing was tested. They even offered discounts and bonuses. Crickets... Hardly anyone opened the emails. Fewer clicked. It looked like the list was just… dead. But here’s the thing: The list wasn’t dead. Emails never reached their audience. The real problem? Their sender reputation was in the gutter. Too many past sends to unengaged contacts. Poor list hygiene. Poor response rates. Spam complaints. They were trying to re-engage ghosts, because the emails weren’t making it to the inbox in the first place. So we flipped the strategy: ✅ Fixed the root deliverability issues ✅ Segmented by most recent engagement ✅ Cleaned the list and re-built trust with aligned content ✅ Slowly reintroduced traffic and warmed up the domain Only then did we try re-engagement again — and this time, it worked. So the takeaway: Your list isn’t the issue, but your email deliverability might be. If your deliverability is broken, even the best emails won’t convert. Fix the foundation first. Then re-engage.

I just did something that would terrify most marketers. I cut my client's email list in HALF. Yes, I literally removed 18,000 subscribers from their list of 35,000. And I'm about to tell you why this was the smartest move we could have made. Before doing this, their open rate was sitting below 20%, their deliverability was tanking, and email service providers were starting to flag them as potential spam (I even saw an open rate of 6.3% in one campaign). I had to act fast before their entire email marketing channel collapsed. First, I removed everyone who had never opened a single email since joining—that was 6,900 subscribers gone immediately. Then I removed everyone who hadn't opened anything in the last 90 days. But here's the critical part most marketers miss: I didn't just delete these people forever. I added them to a 'Do not contact' list. Why? So we can send them a strategic re-engagement campaign later. After this cleanup, our final number of active subscribers dropped to 17,000. But watch what happened next: Our open rates jumped from under 20% to over 38% practically overnight. And most importantly, our actual revenue from email marketing went UP despite having half the list size. This is counterintuitive to most marketers who obsess over list size, but engaged subscribers are worth infinitely more than inactive ones. In fact, those inactive subscribers were actively hurting our performance by damaging deliverability. When was the last time you cleaned your email list? If you're seeing open rates below 20%, you might be due for a serious cleanup. #emailmarketing #advertising #digitalmarketing

Here's how to save a dying email list without destroying your deliverability 👇 A few months ago, we were approached by a company that had collected ~150k emails over the life of their business (a subscription platform). They were primarily sending transactional and promotional emails, and the list had gone almost entirely cold at a ~10% open rate. They wanted to re-engage the email list that they'd built by launching a value-focused newsletter for their brand, so they reached out to our team at Tailwind. We turned that 10% open rate into a highly engaged list of 50,000 subscribers (and growing) with a 50% open rate 🚀 So, what's the secret? It comes down to creating content that gives people a genuine reason to open your emails (more on this soon), and a smart, conservative “migration” strategy. Let's focus on the migration strategy piece. Simplified, it’s a 3-step process: 1. Start by adding any contacts/emails that have engaged recently to your newsletter list (this will give you a good foundation to build on) 2. On a weekly basis, add relatively small, manageable cohorts from the dormant list to the newsletter 3. Aggressively churn non-openers That last step is the most important, and where most operators will go wrong. In our approach, if someone doesn't open their first four or five newsletters, they're off the list. Sounds harsh? Maybe. But remember - if you’re starting from a largely dormant list, these folks weren't opening emails anyway! Better to protect your deliverability than keep sending to permanent non-openers. On a weekly basis, this could look like adding 5,000 subscribers from the dormant list and removing 3,000 non-openers from past cohorts. You’re growing by 2,000 subscribers/week, and your engagement stays consistently high because you're only keeping your openers. The results speak for themselves. Not only did we achieve that 50% open rate, but these subscribers actively engage with promotions, respond to surveys, and reply to emails. An engaged list of 50k is more valuable than 150k non-openers!

🚀 How We Achieve 40-50% Email Open Rates (and You Can Too!) Time & Again across different industries (Banking, Logistics, Real Estate) I've consistently achieved email open rates exceeding 40%. It's not magic, but a combination of best practices and meticulous execution. Here's the inside scoop (Part 1): 1. List (Base/Segment) Hygiene is Paramount: Regularly clean your list: Remove inactive subscribers, hard bounces, and invalid email addresses. Segment your audience: Divide your list based on demographics, interests, behaviour, and engagement. Reactivate dormant subscribers: Re-engage inactive subscribers with targeted campaigns. Give subscribers control: Allow them to adjust email frequency and easily unsubscribe. 2. Subject Lines That Hook: Understand your audience: Deeply understand their pain points, interests, and motivations. Keep it concise: Short, punchy subject lines are more effective. Use power words: Trigger emotions like curiosity, urgency, and excitement (e.g., "Exclusive," "Limited Time," "Discover"). Personalize: Use dynamic data to create personalized subject lines. Highlight a clear benefit: Clearly state what the recipient will gain by opening the email. Avoid spam triggers: Steer clear of words like "free," "guarantee," and excessive exclamation points. A/B test relentlessly: Experiment with different subject lines to see what resonates best. 3. Pre-header Power: Keep it concise and relevant: Summarize the email's key message in a few words. Highlight the benefits: Clearly state what the recipient will gain by opening the email. Create a sense of urgency: Leverage FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) to encourage immediate action. Personalize: Include personalized elements to increase relevance. Include a clear call-to-action: Encourage the recipient to take the desired action (e.g., "Read Now," "Shop Now," "Learn More"). 4. Timing is Everything (Almost): Test different send times: Experiment with various send times for each segment to determine optimal delivery times. Consider audience factors: Account for factors like location, age, and occupation when scheduling sends. 5. Sender ID Matters (More Than You Think): Establish a strong sender reputation: Ensure your emails are consistently delivered to inboxes. Warm up your sender ID: Gradually increase your email volume to build trust with email providers. Monitor your sender reputation: Regularly check your sender reputation scores and address any issues. By diligently implementing these strategies, you can significantly improve your email open rates and drive better campaign performance.

I’ll never let a dirty email list near my SaaS again. A year ago, we were flying blind at Ajelix. Users signed up, but every week, more support tickets rolled in: “Didn’t get my confirmation.” “Can’t reset my password.” Our marketing emails were invisible. We kept tweaking subject lines and templates, changing ESPs, convinced that was the problem. The real issue? We had dozens of invalid or abandoned addresses in our list that no one questioned. Each bad email quietly chipped away at our sender reputation until even legitimate users couldn’t get through onboarding. At one point, our bounce rate spiked past 5% which is deadly for SaaS. We burned weeks blaming providers, migration tools, cold outreach tactics, anything but the real problem: a dirty list. Cleaning our lists before sending changed everything: - Bounce rate went from 5% to under 0.2% - Support tickets for missing emails dropped 70% - Open rate jumped from 20% to 67% Now, we validate every email with our API before it enters our system. It’s non-negotiable. It took nearly a year of losing users and budget for this lesson to stick. If you’re running SaaS or outbound, don’t make the same mistake. One bad import or unchecked signup can trash months of growth. What’s your process for keeping lists clean? Want to avoid the mess? You can run your list through Mailerio and start seeing clean results now: https://mailerio.com/ How are you handling this in your own process?