What are the best practices for sending privacy updates to a large, disengaged email list?

Key findings

• Segment by engagement: Segmenting your list based on last engagement date or signup date is crucial. Prioritize sending to the most recently engaged subscribers first to minimize risks.
• Deliverability over reach: It is often impossible to reach every single disengaged subscriber without severely jeopardizing your sender reputation. Legal teams may need to understand this technical limitation.
• Gradual approach: Send the privacy updates in small, carefully managed segments over time. This allows you to monitor deliverability metrics and pause if issues arise, protecting your overall sending reputation.
• Spam trap avoidance: Disengaged lists are highly likely to contain spam traps, which can lead to immediate blacklisting and significant deliverability problems.
• Legal interpretation: There may be opportunities to argue against sending to extremely disengaged users, especially if there is no ongoing relationship, as privacy requirements might not apply equally to all contacts.

Key considerations

• Collaboration with legal: Work closely with your legal department to explain the technical realities of email deliverability. Help them understand the risks of sending to extremely old or unengaged contacts.
• Consult your ESP: Your Email Service Provider (ESP) can provide guidance and potentially specialized infrastructure or processes for such campaigns, as they understand your sending patterns and reputation.
• Proactive communication: Consider informing major mailbox providers (MBPs) in advance if you plan a large-scale send to a disengaged list. This can help mitigate potential deliverability issues.
• List hygiene: Implement continuous list hygiene practices and potentially engage in email list cleaning to minimize the presence of invalid addresses and spam traps before mandated sends.
• Reference guidelines: Utilize established industry guidelines for sending mandated emails to disengaged lists, such as those provided by M3AAWG.

Key opinions

• Segment and throttle: Many marketers advocate for segmenting the disengaged list by last engagement or signup date and sending in throttled batches to mitigate risk.
• Accept unreachability: There's a shared understanding that some portion of a very old, disengaged list will simply be unreachable, regardless of effort, due to inactive addresses or spam traps.
• Prioritize active users: Focus initial sends on the most active segments to build trust with mailbox providers before venturing into older, riskier contacts.
• Re-engagement campaigns: Some marketers suggest a re-engagement campaign as a preliminary step, to identify truly lost contacts before any mandated sends.
• Manage expectations: Marketers frequently need to educate legal and other internal stakeholders about the realities of email deliverability and why a full list send is problematic.

Key considerations

• List hygiene practices: Implement robust list hygiene, including removing duplicates, fixing typos, and regularly updating invalid addresses, as highlighted by Klaviyo.
• Opt-out process: Ensure a clear and easy opt-out process to respect user preferences and prevent spam complaints, which can negatively impact deliverability.
• Compliance vs. deliverability: While legal compliance is critical, marketers must weigh it against the potential damage to sender reputation and future email program effectiveness.
• Automated workflows: Utilize automation to segment and manage disengaged contacts over time, ensuring a systematic approach to list health.
• A/B testing: Consider A/B testing different approaches for re-engaging or notifying segments of the disengaged list to identify what yields the best deliverability outcomes.

Key opinions

• Consult your ESP: The first step should always be to consult with your ESP, as they can provide tailored advice based on your sending history and infrastructure.
• Proactive MBP communication: Experts advise reaching out to major mailbox providers directly to inform them of a planned, large-scale send to a disengaged list. This transparency can help prevent unexpected blocklisting (or blacklisting) events.
• Re-evaluate legal necessity: Questioning whether a legal requirement truly applies to individuals with whom the sender no longer has an active relationship can be a valid strategy, especially with GDPR considerations.
• Data removal: Consider removing or anonymizing old, unengaged data, particularly personally identifiable information (PII), if there's no clear future value or a high risk associated with retaining it.
• Sunset policy: Implement a clear sunset policy to regularly clean your list of perpetually disengaged subscribers, which proactively protects your sender reputation and mitigates the risk of hitting spam traps.

Key considerations

• Reputation impact: Understand that sending to a highly disengaged list carries a significant risk of damaging your domain and IP reputation, affecting future deliverability, as explained by SMTP.com.
• Warming strategies: If a send to an old list is unavoidable, consider a slow warming-up strategy, sending very small volumes initially and gradually increasing, mirroring practices for new sending IPs.
• Consent nuances: For international lists, particularly in the EU/UK, GDPR adds complexity. Ensure legal counsel fully understands the implications of sending privacy updates to individuals who may no longer have active consent.
• Post-send monitoring: After any send to a disengaged list, meticulously monitor your deliverability metrics, including bounce rates, spam complaints, and any blocklist (or blacklist) listings.
• Alternative notification methods: Explore alternative methods for privacy notifications for truly disengaged contacts, such as updates on your website or through other channels, if email is deemed too risky.

Key findings

• Mandated email guidelines: Organizations like M3AAWG provide specific guidelines for sending legally mandated emails, focusing on deliverability without compromising compliance.
• Automated segmentation: Many platforms and experts recommend setting up automated rules to segment or remove customers who have not engaged for a certain period or whose addresses have bounced multiple times.
• Opt-out importance: Clear and easy opt-out processes are universally recommended to reduce spam complaints and improve list quality.
• Engagement monitoring: Consistent monitoring of engagement metrics is vital to identify disengaged subscribers and prevent them from harming overall deliverability.
• Content best practices: Even for mandated emails, adhering to general content best practices (clear subject lines, balanced text/image ratio) can influence inbox placement.

Key considerations

• GDPR and international lists: For international audiences, particularly within Europe, GDPR regulations necessitate careful consideration of consent and data retention, which may impact how disengaged lists are managed for privacy updates. For further details on legally mandated emails, refer to our guide on best practices for legally mandated emails.
• Sunset policies: Official documentation often supports the implementation of a sunset policy, where unengaged subscribers are eventually removed from the list to protect sender reputation.
• Validation tools: Email validation services are recommended to clean lists of invalid addresses and spam traps before high-volume sends.
• Deliverability metrics: Prioritize monitoring key deliverability metrics like bounce rates, complaint rates, and inbox placement to gauge the impact of sending to disengaged segments.
• Re-engagement strategy: Documentation supports attempting to re-engage inactive subscribers before considering suppression or removal, though this must be done carefully.