I’m always an advocate for delegating things!  But some things we absolutely have to do ourselves, like cleaning out our closets and cleaning our mailing lists.  We’re in the process of cleaning my own subscriber list, and here are the reasons why.

We recently sent an email to anyone who hasn’t opened ANY of my messages since January 1, 2012.  The message explained that it is important to me to only be sending messages to those who actually want to receive information from me.  I tell my own clients to unsubscribe to anything they don’t read on a regular basis.  Having a lot of emails clogging up the in-box is not a good business tactic.

Also, subscribers who rarely open or click email messages can drag down your emails’ reputation. Nowadays ISPs, such as Hotmail, Gmail, etc., expect marketers to audit their mailing lists on a regular basis.  Mailing to inactive subscribers can negatively impact your reputation should you unknowingly hit a spam trap or if your messages get reported as spam.

Futhermore, sending messages to unresponsive subscribers can negatively affect how your email is displayed within your subscribers’ inboxes. Most of the popular ISPs now use engagement metrics to decide whether to put your email higher up in the inbox, or into the recipient’s junk folder.  So your deliverability is at stake as well.

Then there is the last motivating factor to clean your list, which is cost. Why bother emailing inactive subscribers if they’re never going to see it or respond to it? Better to remove inactive subscribers and save the money.  aWeber charges me based on how many subscribers I have, so why pay for subscribers who aren’t engaged?

If you haven’t cleaned your list in awhile, or ever, take advantage of your email marketing provider’s analytics, and take a look at the engagement metrics of your subscribers.  Then get scrubbing to you can have a clean list of subscribers who are active members of your community.

What are your thoughts on deleting subscribers? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment below.