Should I unsubscribe inactive users and what are the best practices?
Matthew Whittaker
Co-founder & CTO, Suped
Published 22 May 2025
Updated 15 Aug 2025
8 min read
Managing your email list effectively is crucial for maintaining strong email deliverability and ensuring your messages consistently reach the inbox. A common challenge email marketers face is dealing with inactive subscribers, those who haven't opened or clicked an email in a significant period. The question often arises: should you automatically unsubscribe these users, or are there better strategies?
While it might seem counterintuitive to reduce your list size, actively managing inactive contacts can significantly benefit your overall email program. Sending emails to disengaged users can lead to negative consequences, impacting your sender reputation and ultimately, your inbox placement rates.
The decision to unsubscribe inactive users isn't always straightforward. It requires a nuanced approach that balances list hygiene with potential re-engagement opportunities. Understanding the impact of inactive subscribers and implementing best practices for their management is key to sustained email marketing success.
The impact of inactive subscribers on email deliverability
Inactive subscribers pose a significant threat to your email deliverability. When internet service providers (ISPs), like Google and Microsoft, observe that a large percentage of your emails are not being opened or clicked, it signals a lack of engagement. This lack of engagement can negatively impact your sender reputation, making it more likely that your emails will land in the spam folder, even for your active subscribers. In some cases, prolonged low engagement can even lead to your IP or domain being added to an email blacklist or blocklist.
Beyond deliverability, there's a financial incentive to manage inactive users. Many email service providers (ESPs) charge based on the number of subscribers on your list. By holding onto unengaged contacts, you're paying to send emails to people who aren't interacting with your content, effectively wasting marketing budget. Cleaning your list can lead to significant cost savings, improving your return on investment (ROI).
Moreover, sending to inactive subscribers increases the risk of hitting spam traps. Spam traps are email addresses specifically set up by ISPs and anti-spam organizations to catch senders who are not maintaining their lists properly or who are sending unsolicited mail. Hitting a spam trap can severely damage your sender reputation and result in your emails being blocked across multiple providers. As MailPoet highlights, repeatedly sending emails to disengaged subscribers can harm your deliverability.
The risks of emailing unengaged users
Damaged sender reputation: ISPs see low engagement as a sign of irrelevant content or poor list quality, leading to lower inbox placement.
Increased spam complaints: Inactive users are more likely to mark your emails as spam, which directly harms your reputation.
Higher costs: You pay for subscribers who aren't generating value, impacting your marketing budget.
Spam trap hits: Old, unengaged addresses can become spam traps, leading to severe blacklisting (or blocklisting) issues.
Defining and identifying inactive subscribers
Before you can manage inactive users, you need to define what inactive means for your specific business. This definition isn't universal; it depends on your email frequency, content type, and sales cycle. For a daily newsletter, someone inactive for 30 days might be considered disengaged, while for a product with a long sales cycle, 6-12 months might be more appropriate. You can learn more about this in our guide on how to define unengaged subscribers.
Identification typically involves tracking key engagement metrics: email opens, clicks, and recent purchases or website activity. Segmenting your list based on these metrics allows you to identify different tiers of engagement, from highly active to completely dormant. For example, you might create segments for users who haven't opened an email in 90 days, 180 days, or even longer.
It's important to note that simply not opening emails doesn't always mean a subscriber is completely disengaged. Some users may skim subject lines or find value in your brand without direct email interaction. However, for the health of your list and deliverability, focusing on explicit engagement signals (opens, clicks) is the most reliable way to identify truly inactive contacts.
Low open rates: Emails are delivered but not opened, indicating disinterest.
No clicks on links: Subscribers open but never click through to content or offers.
Absence of recent purchases: For e-commerce, no purchase activity over a defined period.
No website visits: Lack of interaction with your site, even if not directly from an email.
Re-engagement campaigns before unsubscribing
Before resorting to outright unsubscribing, consider implementing re-engagement campaigns. These are targeted email sequences designed to win back the attention of inactive subscribers. The goal is to reignite their interest and get them interacting with your emails again. As SmartSites suggests, consider sending a re-engagement drip before outright removal. You can find more strategies in our article on how to re-engage inactive email subscribers.
Effective re-engagement campaigns often involve different types of content or offers than your regular emails. This might include a special discount, an update on new features, or a personalized message asking about their preferences. The key is to provide value that might prompt them to re-engage. Consider varying your subject lines, sending times, and even the sender name to catch their eye.
Segmentation plays a vital role here. Instead of treating all inactive users the same, segment them by their level of inactivity. Users who haven't opened an email in 90 days might receive a different re-engagement series than those inactive for 365 days. The longer the inactivity, the more careful you need to be, as mailing truly dormant addresses can trigger spam traps. It's often more cost-effective to re-engage inactive customers than to acquire new ones, so this step is crucial.
Re-engage before unsubscribing
Benefits: Retain potential customers, recover lost revenue, improve overall list quality through re-engagement.
Process: Segment inactive users, send targeted re-engagement campaigns with special offers or updated content.
Risk: Minimal risk if campaigns are well-segmented and time-limited.
Process: Identify inactive users and manually or automatically remove them from active sending lists.
Risk: Risk of prematurely losing a potentially valuable customer, especially those with long purchase cycles.
Implementing a sunset policy
A sunset policy is a structured approach to managing inactive subscribers over time. Instead of immediately unsubscribing them, you gradually reduce the frequency of emails sent to them, moving them to increasingly less frequent segments. The final step in a sunset policy is typically to suppress (stop sending to) these contacts rather than automatically unsubscribing them. This distinction is important: an unsubscribe should ideally be an action taken by the subscriber themselves. Our guides on e-commerce sunset policies and sunsetting inactive subscribers can provide further insights.
A typical sunset policy might look like this: after 90 days of inactivity, move the subscriber to a monthly digest. After 180 days, send a final re-engagement campaign. If there's still no response after 270 days, move them to a suppression list, meaning you no longer send them any marketing emails. This process ensures you've given them ample opportunity to re-engage while protecting your sender reputation.
The benefit of suppression over forced unsubscription is that you retain their data for analytics or other non-marketing communications, and if they somehow become active again (e.g., visit your website directly), you can consider re-adding them to an active segment, but with extreme caution and only if they explicitly opt-in again. It’s also crucial to be aware of having a sunset policy in place, as suggested by Mailgun.
Example: Basic sunset policy ruleSQL
IF last_open_date is more than 270 days ago AND total_clicks_past_year = 0 THEN move_to_suppression_list;
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Define 'inactive' based on your specific business and email frequency.
Implement multi-stage re-engagement campaigns before full suppression.
Use a clear sunset policy to gradually reduce email frequency for inactive users.
Segment your audience precisely to manage engagement levels effectively.
Common pitfalls
Automatically unsubscribing users without prior re-engagement attempts.
Keeping severely inactive subscribers on your active sending lists indefinitely.
Ignoring engagement metrics, leading to a bloated and ineffective email list.
Failing to communicate policy changes for inactive accounts to users.
Expert tips
Focus on domain reputation, as ISPs like Outlook heavily weigh engagement.
Educate clients on the importance of list hygiene and deliverability best practices.
Consider customer purchase patterns to define inactivity relevant to your product cycle.
Remember that ISPs ultimately control inbox placement, regardless of local laws.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says to implement sunset policies, particularly focusing on how Outlook handles engagement, and suggested that 9 to 12 months is a reasonable maximum inactivity period before segmenting out users, as unsubscribing without notification could be seen as a data state change requiring user consent.
2020-11-11 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says that while contacts should initiate unsubscribes themselves, marketers should manage sending frequency to lapsing or passive users by segmenting them based on engagement.
2020-11-11 - Email Geeks
Balancing list hygiene and subscriber value
The decision to unsubscribe inactive users is a strategic one, primarily driven by the need to maintain strong sender reputation and optimize marketing spend. While there’s no universal answer, a well-thought-out approach involves defining inactivity for your specific audience, attempting re-engagement, and implementing a careful sunset policy. This balance ensures you're not prematurely losing potential customers while also protecting your domain and IP reputation from being added to a blocklist.
Ultimately, a clean and engaged email list is one of your most valuable assets in email marketing. By actively managing inactive subscribers, you improve your deliverability, reduce costs, and ensure your messages reach the people who truly want to hear from you.
Google and 
Microsoft, observe that a large percentage of your emails are not being opened or clicked, it signals a lack of engagement. This lack of engagement can negatively impact your sender reputation, making it more likely that your emails will land in the spam folder, even for your active subscribers. In some cases, prolonged low engagement can even lead to your IP or domain being added to an email blacklist or blocklist.
