How to logically reduce inactive email contacts considering seasonal products?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 24 Jun 2025
Updated 19 Aug 2025
8 min read
Managing inactive email contacts is a common challenge for email marketers, particularly when dealing with seasonal products. It's a balancing act: you want to keep your list clean and engaged to ensure strong deliverability, but you also don't want to prematurely remove subscribers who might only engage during specific times of the year.
The traditional approach of suppressing contacts who haven't opened emails in the last 6-12 months can be problematic for businesses with seasonal sales cycles. A customer who buys holiday decorations, for instance, might only engage with your brand once a year. Labeling them inactive after six months and removing them could mean missing out on significant revenue opportunities.
This calls for a more nuanced strategy, one that considers the unique purchasing patterns and engagement cycles of your seasonal customer base. The goal is to logically reduce your contact numbers while preserving relationships with valuable, albeit cyclically engaged, subscribers. This involves a careful analysis of your data and a thoughtful approach to segmentation and re-engagement.
Understanding inactivity and seasonality
When we talk about inactive contacts, we generally refer to subscribers who haven't opened, clicked, or otherwise engaged with our emails within a defined period. For many businesses, a 6-month or 12-month window is standard. However, this definition needs to be re-evaluated when seasonal products are involved.
A key challenge is distinguishing between truly disengaged subscribers and those who are simply out of their peak buying season. For example, if you sell winter sports equipment, a customer might only engage with your emails in the fall and winter. A blanket 6-month inactivity rule could unfairly flag them as inactive during the spring and summer, leading to their unnecessary removal or suppression.
Seasonal vs. consistently engaged
Seasonal engagement: Consider a longer inactivity window, perhaps 12-18 months, or segment based on last purchase date of a seasonal product.
Consistent engagement: For non-seasonal products or segments, a 6-12 month window might be appropriate. Regularly identify and attempt to re-engage inactive subscribers to improve overall list health.
To effectively manage inactive contacts, it's crucial to adopt a tailored approach. We need to consider not just opens and clicks, but also purchase history, website activity, and how these align with your product's seasonality. This will help you avoid mistakenly removing potentially valuable customers and ensure your email marketing efforts remain efficient and effective.
Sophisticated segmentation for seasonal cycles
The key to logically reducing inactive contacts while accounting for seasonality lies in sophisticated segmentation. Rather than relying solely on email engagement metrics like opens or clicks, integrate customer behavioral data into your segmentation strategy.
Start by identifying your peak seasons for each product category. If you sell both summer swimwear and winter coats, their inactive periods will naturally differ. Segment your audience based on their primary purchase history or the product categories they've shown interest in. This allows you to apply different inactivity windows per segment. For instance, a sunsetting policy of 12 months might be appropriate for a seasonal buyer, while 6 months works for a general interest subscriber.
Strategies for identifying seasonal inactive contacts
Traditional inactivity metrics
Email opens: Basic engagement, but can be influenced by proxy opens.
Email clicks: Stronger indicator of interest and intent.
Last email received: Helps define the start of the inactivity window.
Seasonal-aware inactivity metrics
Last purchase date: Crucial for identifying true long-term inactivity beyond seasonal cycles.
Website visits/activity: Shows interest even without email engagement.
Engagement by product category: Segment based on historical engagement with seasonal items.
Additionally, leverage any demographic data you have, such as date of birth or children's birthdays, as mentioned in the Slack discussion. These data points enable automated, personalized emails that can re-engage contacts even if they haven't interacted with your general marketing campaigns for a while. For example, a birthday email or a reminder about a child's upcoming birthday can serve as a valuable touchpoint, potentially reactivating an otherwise dormant subscriber before you consider removing them.
Re-engagement and sunsetting policies
Once you've identified your seasonally inactive segments, the next step is to implement a strategic re-engagement process before considering removal. This involves carefully crafted win-back email campaigns designed to gently nudge them back into activity, specifically during their relevant buying season. Avoid sending generic re-engagement emails outside of their typical engagement window, as this can lead to low open rates and further harm your sender reputation.
For seasonal subscribers, a win-back campaign could be triggered just before the start of their anticipated buying season, reminding them of your products or offering exclusive early access. For other inactive contacts, a series of emails offering incentives or asking for preference updates can be effective. If these efforts fail, then it's time to consider a sunset policy, which dictates when to stop sending emails to unengaged subscribers.
Maintaining a clean email list by regularly removing inactive contacts is crucial for good deliverability. Sending to unengaged email addresses can lead to higher bounce rates, increased spam complaints, and a damaged sender reputation. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Google and Yahoo closely monitor engagement metrics. A low engagement rate signals that your emails might not be relevant, which can lead to your emails being directed to the spam folder or even your domain being blacklisted. This is why even with seasonal considerations, a structured approach to list hygiene is non-negotiable.
Example: Segmenting for seasonal re-engagement
Basic segmentation logic pseudo-codeSQL
IF last_purchase_category = 'Winter Sports' AND last_engagement_date < '2023-09-01' THEN segment_seasonal_inactive
ELSE IF last_engagement_date < '2023-06-01' AND total_purchases = 0 THEN segment_long_term_inactive
ELSE segment_active
By segmenting effectively and implementing targeted re-engagement campaigns, you can maximize your chances of reactivating seasonal customers while safely removing truly disengaged contacts who pose a risk to your deliverability.
The impact of inactive contacts on costs and deliverability
The decision to reduce inactive contacts often stems from a desire to cut costs and avoid hoarding unnecessary data. Many email service providers (ESPs) charge based on the number of contacts in your database, regardless of whether you're actively sending to them. This means maintaining a large list of disengaged subscribers can lead to significant, avoidable expenses.
Beyond the direct financial cost, there's the indirect cost of diminished deliverability. Email providers use engagement metrics to determine your sender reputation. A high volume of sends to inactive addresses can artificially lower your engagement rates, signaling to ISPs that your emails are not valuable. This can lead to your messages landing in the spam folder, even for your active subscribers. In some cases, it can even lead to your IP or domain being placed on a blacklist (or blocklist), making it very difficult to reach the inbox.
From a data privacy perspective, it's generally a good practice not to retain personal data longer than necessary, especially if the contact shows no signs of re-engagement. This aligns with principles like GDPR and builds trust with your audience. Regularly cleaning your list not only saves money and improves deliverability, but also ensures you're maintaining a database of genuinely interested individuals.
Consider the long-term benefits: a smaller, highly engaged list often yields a better return on investment (ROI) than a large, unengaged one. By focusing your efforts on subscribers who want to hear from you, you can improve campaign performance and foster stronger customer relationships. This proactive management of inactive subscribers enhances deliverability and overall email program health.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Maintain separate segments for seasonal contacts with longer inactivity windows, aligning with their typical purchase cycles.
Integrate purchase history and website activity data into your segmentation logic to get a holistic view of engagement.
Implement a multi-stage re-engagement strategy for inactive seasonal contacts before considering full suppression or removal.
Common pitfalls
Applying a universal, short inactivity threshold (e.g., 6 months) to all contacts, regardless of their seasonal buying patterns.
Failing to differentiate between truly disengaged contacts and those who are simply in an off-season for your products.
Focusing solely on email opens and clicks as indicators of engagement, ignoring other valuable data points like purchase history.
Expert tips
Analyze historical data to understand your seasonal customers' average engagement cycles and tailor your inactivity windows accordingly.
Consider the long-term ROI. Sometimes, retaining a seemingly inactive seasonal customer is more valuable than saving a small cost now.
Automate the re-engagement and sunsetting process based on your defined criteria to ensure consistent list hygiene.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says: The motivation for deleting contacts significantly impacts the strategy. Optimizing for ROI differs from optimizing to fix delivery issues or simply reducing list size.
2019-11-12 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says: A six-month inactivity threshold is too aggressive if you're sending emails based on birthdays or have seasonal products.
2019-11-12 - Email Geeks
Crafting an intelligent list reduction strategy
Logically reducing inactive email contacts, especially when dealing with seasonal products, requires a flexible and data-driven strategy. A one-size-fits-all approach to defining inactivity can be detrimental, leading to the premature removal of potentially valuable customers or, conversely, the retention of truly disengaged subscribers that harm your deliverability.
By moving beyond simple email engagement metrics and incorporating behavioral data, purchase history, and seasonal patterns, you can develop a more accurate picture of subscriber activity. This allows for tailored re-engagement campaigns and sensible sunset policies that respect both your marketing goals and your customers' unique buying cycles.
Ultimately, a well-managed email list, even if it's smaller, leads to better deliverability, lower costs, and a higher return on your email marketing efforts. Embrace the complexity of seasonality to ensure your contact reduction strategy supports, rather than hinders, your business objectives.
Google and 
Yahoo closely monitor engagement metrics. A low engagement rate signals that your emails might not be relevant, which can lead to your emails being directed to the spam folder or even your domain being blacklisted. This is why even with seasonal considerations, a structured approach to list hygiene is non-negotiable.
