What is the ideal engagement rate and timeframe for automatically churning non-engaged email subscribers?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 6 Aug 2025
Updated 19 Aug 2025
9 min read
Managing an email list effectively is crucial for maintaining a strong sender reputation and ensuring your messages land in the inbox. A significant challenge I often encounter is the presence of non-engaged subscribers. These individuals can negatively impact deliverability, leading to lower open rates, increased spam complaints, and even blocklist (or blacklist) placements. Determining when to consider a subscriber truly unengaged, and the right moment to automatically remove them from your active mailing list, is a nuanced decision that depends on several factors. There isn't a universal benchmark that fits every scenario, but understanding the principles behind engagement and inactivity helps in making informed choices.
The goal is to cultivate a healthy, responsive list that signals positive engagement to internet service providers (ISPs). Sending emails to recipients who consistently ignore them can hurt your domain and IP reputation. It's a balance between nurturing potential future engagement and proactively protecting your sending infrastructure. I'll outline the key considerations for defining inactivity, the optimal timeframes for subscriber churn, and the strategic steps involved in managing non-engaged contacts to preserve your email program's effectiveness.
Understanding email engagement and inactivity
Email engagement isn't just about open rates, especially with privacy changes affecting open tracking. It encompasses a broader range of interactions that indicate a subscriber's interest in your content. These interactions include clicking links, forwarding emails, adding your address to their contacts, replying to emails, and even visiting your website after clicking an email. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Gmail and Yahoo closely monitor these signals to determine whether your emails are valuable to their users. If a significant portion of your emails goes unopened or unclicked, it signals to ISPs that your content might be unwanted, leading to lower inbox placement and increased chances of being flagged as spam.
Key engagement metrics
While there are general benchmarks, what constitutes a good engagement rate varies considerably by industry and email type. For instance, an average email open rate between 17% to 28% might be considered good across most industries. Similarly, a click rate between 2-4% is generally positive. Transactional emails, like welcome messages or order confirmations, typically see much higher engagement rates. Conversely, a consistently low open or click rate can be a clear indicator of disinterest, which can, over time, lead to deliverability issues.
Inactivity, therefore, is the absence of these positive engagement signals over a defined period. This could mean no opens, no clicks, or no other positive interactions with your emails. The longer a subscriber remains inactive, the greater the risk they pose to your sender reputation. These subscribers can turn into spam traps, which are email addresses used by ISPs to identify senders of unsolicited bulk email. Hitting spam traps or sending to dormant addresses that are no longer monitored can result in your IP address or domain being added to a blocklist (or blacklist), severely impacting your ability to reach the inbox. I encourage you to understand what an email blocklist is to further understand these risks.
This is why defining how to define unengaged subscribers is a critical step in maintaining email deliverability and protecting your sender reputation from potential harm caused by inactive contacts. It's a proactive measure that keeps your list healthy and signals to ISPs that your content is valued by your audience.
Determining the right inactivity timeframe
The ideal timeframe for defining an inactive subscriber is not a fixed number, but rather a dynamic period influenced by various factors unique to your email program and business model. For many, a common starting point for considering subscribers inactive is around three to six months of no discernible engagement, such as opens or clicks. However, this can extend to nine or even twelve months, particularly for businesses with less frequent email cycles or longer sales pipelines.
Factors influencing inactivity timeframe
Industry type
Industries with high-frequency communication (e.g., daily news, e-commerce promotions) might see inactivity in as little as 30-90 days. Conversely, B2B services or industries with seasonal purchasing behaviors (e.g., travel, real estate) might have inactive periods spanning 180 days or more. If your emails are sent daily, a subscriber who hasn't engaged in 90 days has ignored 90 emails, posing a greater risk than a subscriber in a monthly newsletter scenario.
Sending frequency
The more frequently you send, the shorter your inactivity window should be. If you email daily, a subscriber inactive for 60 days is a bigger concern than one who is inactive for 60 days on a monthly send schedule. This is why increasing email frequency for engaged subscribers must be done carefully.
Subscriber value
Consider the value of the subscriber. A paying customer who hasn't opened marketing emails in a while might be worth nurturing for a longer period (e.g., up to 270 days or more) compared to a free trial user. Their value to your business extends beyond email engagement.
My default timeframe for typical marketing lists tends to be 180 days, but I tighten it to 90 days in dire situations where deliverability is severely suffering. This often means I'm dealing with high bounce rates, low open rates, and potentially even being listed on a blocklist (or blacklist). The key is not to pick an arbitrary number but to analyze your own data. Look for the point where the probability of a non-engaged subscriber suddenly re-engaging becomes extremely low. This is your effective cut-off point.
I often explain to clients that continuing to email unengaged subscribers is like trying to have a conversation with someone who isn't listening. Not only is it unproductive, but it can also make your domain look less credible to mailbox providers. Regularly reviewing your inactive list and taking action can significantly improve your overall deliverability. This is why it's so important to know when to remove unengaged subscribers from your lists.
The process of sunsetting inactive subscribers
Automatically churning non-engaged subscribers should ideally be the final step in a strategic process that begins with re-engagement. Before you permanently remove subscribers, it's prudent to run a re-engagement campaign. This is a series of emails designed to win back inactive subscribers by offering special incentives, updating them on new features, or simply asking if they still wish to receive your communications. A typical re-engagement sequence might involve 3-5 emails spaced out over a week or two, with a clear call to action to confirm their interest.
Re-engagement versus churning
Re-engagement campaign
Purpose: Attempts to reactivate inactive subscribers before removal.
The success rate of re-engagement campaigns can vary, but even reactivating a small percentage of dormant subscribers is beneficial. Those who do not respond to the re-engagement campaign are then candidates for removal.
Subscriber churning (removal/suppression)
Purpose: To improve deliverability and sender reputation by removing detrimental contacts. This is also called sunsetting inactive email subscribers.
Method: Permanent removal or suppression from active mailing lists. Often done automatically via segmentation rules within your ESP.
Benefits: Higher engagement rates for your remaining list, reduced email sending costs, and decreased risk of hitting spam traps or being blocklisted.
The act of unsubscribing inactive users should be automated as much as possible once your inactivity criteria and re-engagement strategy are defined. Modern email service providers (ESPs) offer robust segmentation capabilities that allow you to create dynamic segments of unengaged subscribers based on your chosen timeframe and engagement metrics. Once identified, these segments can be automatically moved to a suppression list, preventing future sends.
I consider this automated churning a crucial aspect of email list hygiene. It's not about losing subscribers, but about retaining the quality of your list. A smaller, highly engaged list will always outperform a large, disengaged one in terms of deliverability and ultimately, conversions. It also saves you money on ESP fees, which are often based on list size. If you're seeing steadily decreasing open rates, removing these unengaged contacts is often a primary step in cleaning your email list.
Best practices for managing inactive subscribers
Achieving an ideal engagement rate and maintaining it requires continuous effort and adherence to best practices. One of the most important is to segment your audience based on engagement levels. This allows you to tailor your content and sending frequency. For your most engaged subscribers, you might send more frequent, conversion-focused emails, while less active segments receive a different, perhaps re-engagement focused, cadence. The goal is to keep your email streams healthy and to avoid sending to addresses that are likely to cause issues.
Practical implementation of segmentation
Your ESP should allow you to set up rules for automatic segmentation and suppression. Here's a simplified example of how you might define a segment for unengaged users:
Example of an unengaged subscriber segment
Segment: Unengaged Subscribers
Criteria:
- Has not opened any email in the last 180 days
- AND has not clicked any link in the last 180 days
- OR has not received an email in the last 180 days (for new subscribers who never engaged)
- AND is not on a separate transactional-only list
Action:
- Move to 'Suppressed' list after 180 days of inactivity following re-engagement attempts.
Additionally, regularly monitoring your deliverability metrics, such as spam complaint rates and blocklist (or blacklist) status, is essential. A sudden spike in complaints or an unexpected listing on a public blocklist (sometimes called a DNSBL or RBL) can indicate that your inactive list is causing problems. This is where a blocklist checker can be incredibly useful.
Remember, the goal isn't just to remove subscribers but to maintain a high-quality list that yields strong results and keeps you out of the spam folder. Proactive list hygiene is a cornerstone of successful email marketing and will help avoid deliverability issues. This is why excluding unengaged subscribers is a deliverability best practice.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Actively monitor engagement data, don't just set and forget your list segments.
Always attempt a re-engagement campaign before permanently removing subscribers.
Keep your inactivity definitions flexible, adjusting them as your email program evolves or industry benchmarks shift.
Regularly review your segments and automation rules to ensure they align with your current goals.
Common pitfalls
Waiting too long to remove inactive subscribers, leading to sender reputation damage.
Defining inactivity solely on open rates without considering other engagement signals.
Fear of 'losing' subscribers, leading to an oversized, underperforming list.
Not segmenting lists based on engagement levels, sending the same content to everyone.
Expert tips
Use nested smart lists within your ESP to create precise control over engagement windows and audience shifts.
Look for the point in your historical data where re-engagement odds become extremely low and make that your cutoff.
Consider transactional or high-value customer lists separately, as their inactivity criteria might differ.
Focus on the actual behavior of your users, not just industry generalities, as every list is unique.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that a 12-month inactivity period is usually their starting point for clients, but they dial it in more quickly if deliverability issues arise. When things are dire, they start with a 90-day cull.
2023-04-19 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says they typically use a 180-day inactivity window, extending to 270 days for paying customers, and tightening to 90 days when a stricter approach is needed. They emphasize looking at various engagement metrics beyond just opens.
2023-04-19 - Email Geeks
Optimizing your email list for success
Optimizing your email list by identifying and churning non-engaged subscribers is not merely a task for list hygiene, it's a strategic imperative for long-term email deliverability and marketing success. While there's no single magic number for the ideal engagement rate or inactivity timeframe, the principles remain consistent: a healthy list is an engaged list.
By understanding the various factors that influence engagement thresholds and implementing a systematic approach to re-engagement and removal, you can significantly improve your inbox placement, reduce bounce and complaint rates, and safeguard your sender reputation. It's about sending the right messages to the right people at the right time, ensuring your email program remains effective and profitable. Remember, proactive list management is always more effective than reactive damage control when it comes to email deliverability.
Gmail and 
Yahoo closely monitor these signals to determine whether your emails are valuable to their users. If a significant portion of your emails goes unopened or unclicked, it signals to ISPs that your content might be unwanted, leading to lower inbox placement and increased chances of being flagged as spam.
