Summary
When dealing with unengaged email subscribers, a critical decision arises: should they be included in regular campaigns with active recipients or segregated into separate sends? The consensus among deliverability professionals leans towards segmenting these audiences. While some marketers might consider mixing to dilute the poison, the potential negative impact on sender reputation and overall inbox placement for the engaged segment often outweighs any perceived benefits. Separate campaigns allow for tailored re-engagement strategies and provide clearer metrics, helping to inform decisions about list hygiene and future sending practices.
Key findings
- Separate sending is preferred: Sending unengaged subscribers in distinct campaigns is generally recommended to prevent their low engagement from negatively affecting the deliverability of your primary, engaged audience.
- Improved metrics: Isolating unengaged segments provides a more accurate view of your active list's performance, leading to higher open rates and improved overall deliverability for your main campaigns. This directly impacts your Gmail deliverability.
- Minimal engagement from unengaged: Re-engagement campaigns to unengaged users often yield extremely low open rates (e.g., 0.2%), highlighting the limited value of these recipients to your core sender reputation.
- Risk to sender reputation: Continued sending to a highly unengaged list can lead to increased spam complaints, lower inbox placement, and potential blocklisting, regardless of whether it's mixed or separate.
- Sunset policies are key: Ultimately, a sunset policy is crucial for removing persistently unengaged subscribers, protecting your long-term deliverability.
Key considerations
- Client insistence: If clients insist on mailing unengaged contacts, prioritize clear data tracking and consider using a separate IP address or sub-domain for these sends to mitigate risks to your primary sending reputation.
- Targeted re-engagement: If sending to unengaged users, craft specific re-engagement messages designed to elicit a response or confirm their interest, rather than general marketing content. For more insights, see how to revive inactive subscribers.
- Monitoring: Closely monitor metrics for all segments, especially the unengaged ones, to quickly identify and address any negative trends in deliverability or sender reputation.
- Data-driven decisions: Use data (open rates, spam complaints, bounce rates) to demonstrate the lack of value from unengaged segments and make a stronger case for list hygiene practices, including when to remove unengaged subscribers.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often face a balancing act between client demands for broader reach and the practical realities of maintaining a healthy sender reputation. Their experiences largely confirm that isolating unengaged segments, even if it's not a full sunset, yields better results for their main engaged campaigns. The challenge frequently lies in convincing stakeholders of the long-term benefits of list hygiene over short-term volume.
Key opinions
- Improved main campaign performance: Marketers report significant increases in open rates for their engaged segments after separating unengaged subscribers.
- Low value of unengaged sends: Open rates for dedicated unengaged sends are typically extremely low, often below 1%, demonstrating their limited marketing effectiveness and potential harm.
- Deliverability gains: Pulling out inactive subscribers can lead to a notable improvement in overall deliverability rates.
- Strategic segmentation: Creating separate segmented lists for disengaged subscribers allows for more relevant messaging to both active and inactive audiences, optimizing inbox placement. Consider also improving inbox placement with audience segmentation.
Key considerations
- Volume control: When re-engaging, cap the volume of unengaged users, perhaps to a maximum of 20% of your engaged list, and send to engaged recipients first.
- Dedicated tracking: Ensure separate tracking for engaged and unengaged campaigns to gather data that supports future strategic decisions.
- The time-out IP: Some marketers use a specific IP address for sending to highly unengaged lists, treating it as a non-stick frying pan where deliverability issues are more acceptable.
- Phased re-engagement: Instead of a single large re-engagement broadcast, consider sending to smaller, random segments of inactive names over time. This approach can be more effective and less risky.
- The sunset battle: Marketers frequently face internal resistance to sunsetting (removing) inactive subscribers, underscoring the need for clear data to back up these crucial deliverability decisions. For more, explore how to persuade management to remove unengaged email subscribers.
Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that their client wanted to send a separate email to unengaged recipients on the same day as engaged recipients' emails. The marketer questioned if mixing them would dilute the negative impact, but the consensus was to keep them separate.
Email marketer from Kickbox Blog suggests that while contacts can be added to existing campaigns, it's better to create a separate campaign for unengaged contacts to monitor their performance more effectively.
What the experts say
Deliverability experts consistently advocate for strategic segmentation when dealing with unengaged subscribers. Their advice stems from a deep understanding of how mailbox providers (MBPs) assess sender reputation. Rather than diluting poison, they emphasize that protecting the reputation of your primary sending stream is paramount. While some filtering systems might fingerprint individual messages, many MBPs evaluate sender performance holistically, making consistent positive engagement crucial for all sends originating from your infrastructure.
Key opinions
- Do not mix: Experts strongly advise against mixing unengaged recipients with active ones in the same campaign, as it can harm the sender reputation associated with that send.
- Holistic MBP evaluation: While some filters fingerprint messages, most mailbox providers (MBPs) evaluate sender reputation more holistically, meaning poor engagement from one segment can still impact other segments.
- Leveraging existing reputation: You can still leverage the existing good reputation of your sending domains and IP addresses for separate sends to inactives, provided the sending volume and content are reasonable.
- Specialized re-engagement messages: A tailored message for inactive subscribers is more effective than sending them standard promotional content. This approach focuses on re-activating their interest or confirming their subscription.
Key considerations
- Impact of fingerprinting: If a filter provider *does* fingerprint messages, sending separately to unengaged lists could protect your engaged messages from being hurt by poor metrics from the less engaged stream.
- Gradual sunsetting: Ultimately, a strategy to sunset (remove) inactive subscribers is essential for maintaining long-term deliverability and avoiding spam traps.
- Industry and target specific: The optimal strategy may vary based on your specific industry, target audience, and the overall volume of your mailing lists. A nuanced approach is always best.
- Monitor deliverability metrics: Regardless of the sending strategy, continuous monitoring of deliverability rates, open rates, click-through rates, and complaint rates is crucial to assess the health of your sending program.
Deliverability expert from Email Geeks states that mixing unengaged recipients with engaged ones is not recommended. He advises against it without further elaboration, suggesting it is a common best practice.
Deliverability expert from Spamresource.com highlights that sending to unengaged users should ideally involve a special, tailored message, rather than a generic one. This specialized approach aims to reignite interest or confirm subscription status.
What the documentation says
Official documentation from major mailbox providers and industry best practices consistently emphasize the importance of engagement for maintaining good sender reputation. While direct mandates on mixing versus separating unengaged lists are rare, the underlying principles of delivering relevant content to engaged recipients strongly support segmentation. Poor engagement from any segment can contribute to negative sender signals, leading to increased filtering and reduced inbox placement across the board.
Key findings
- Engagement is paramount: ISPs prioritize messages from senders with consistent positive engagement (opens, clicks, replies) and penalize those with low engagement and high complaints.
- Reputation is cumulative: Sender reputation is built over time based on the aggregate performance of all sends, making poor performance from any segment a risk to the entire sending domain or IP.
- Spam trap avoidance: Documentation often warns against sending to old, unengaged addresses because they are likely to turn into spam traps, which severely damage sender reputation and can lead to blocklisting.
- List hygiene importance: Maintaining a clean and engaged list is consistently cited as a top best practice for deliverability. This includes actively removing inactive subscribers.
Key considerations
- Feedback loops: ISPs provide feedback loops (FBLs) to help senders identify and remove subscribers who mark emails as spam. High complaint rates from unengaged segments will quickly trigger these FBLs.
- Sender score metrics: Metrics provided by Postmaster Tools (like Google's) or other deliverability dashboards often aggregate performance. Sending to unengaged lists can lower these scores, impacting inbox placement for all sends.
- Authentication standards: While SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are crucial, even perfectly authenticated emails will land in spam if engagement is consistently poor.
Email documentation from Google Postmaster Tools states that a poor user engagement history (e.g., low open rates, high spam complaints) directly affects email delivery to the inbox. It encourages senders to focus on delivering valuable content to engaged users.
Email documentation from Microsoft's Sender Support Guidelines advises senders to regularly clean their mailing lists of invalid and unengaged email addresses. This proactive approach helps to maintain a positive sending reputation with Outlook.com and other Microsoft properties.
