What are the best filters for identifying unengaged contacts in Brevo, focusing on email opens?
Matthew Whittaker
Co-founder & CTO, Suped
Published 21 Apr 2025
Updated 28 May 2026
8 min read
Summarize with
The best Brevo filter for open-focused unengaged contacts is an AND segment: contacts who received enough campaigns to give the data meaning, have not opened any campaign during the chosen window, and are old enough that they had a fair chance to engage. For most teams, I would start with contacts created more than 90 days ago, sent at least 3 campaigns in the last 12 months, and opened 0 campaigns in the last 12 months.
That filter is a safe baseline, but I would not treat opens as the whole truth. Apple Mail Privacy Protection, image blocking, privacy proxies, and app usage can all make open data incomplete or noisy. If Brevo has clicks, purchases, app activity, replies, or page views for your audience, use those signals to protect people who are active even when they are not recorded as openers.
The short answer
- Core filter: Received at least 3 emails in 12 months and opened no emails in 12 months.
- Age guard: Exclude contacts created in the last 60 to 90 days so new subscribers are not punished.
- Volume guard: Raise the received-email threshold if you send weekly or more often.
- Do not use: One campaign, one non-open, or an OR segment for suppression.
The best open-focused Brevo filter
Brevo's own list-cleaning guidance points users toward Contact details > Engagement status > Unengaged, and the platform lets you exclude unengaged contacts during campaign setup. That built-in segment is useful, but I prefer a custom segment when the goal is specifically open behavior, because the custom version makes the timing and volume assumptions visible. Brevo documents the general cleanup workflow in Brevo list cleaning.
Conservative Brevo segment
Contact details > Creation date > More than > 90 days ago AND Email > Email received > Email campaign > At least > 3 times > 12 months AND Email > Email not opened > Email campaign > In the last > 12 months
The received-email condition matters because a contact who received one campaign and did not open it is not meaningfully unengaged. The age condition matters because a new contact can be wrongly pulled into a no-open segment before they have had a realistic engagement opportunity. The no-open window gives you a clear suppression rule that can be explained to a team without guesswork.
Open data has known measurement limits. If you are seeing strange spikes, drops, or mismatches between open behavior and business activity, review how bot and proxy opens affect reporting before you remove a large group.
Brevo contact segment editor showing open-based unengaged filters.
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Conservative | 3 in 12 months | 12 months | Monthly sends |
Standard | 5 in 6 months | 6 months | Weekly sends |
Aggressive | 8 in 90 days | 90 days | High volume |
Winback | 3 in 3 months | 3 months | Recovery flows |
Use the preset that matches how often you send.
For a low-frequency newsletter, a 12-month window is fair. For a weekly ecommerce sender, 12 months lets too many silent contacts keep receiving mail. In that case, a 6-month no-open window with at least 5 received campaigns gives a cleaner signal without being reckless.
Why opens need guardrails
I still use opens for broad engagement hygiene, but only with guardrails. Opens are recorded when a tracking pixel loads. That means the metric depends on the mail client, image loading, privacy behavior, and how Brevo classifies the event. Brevo also notes that contacts using Apple Mail Privacy Protection can be excluded from its unengaged logic, which is one reason a plain no-open filter needs review before it becomes a hard suppression rule.
The biggest mistake is treating email silence as customer silence. A user can ignore marketing email and still log into an app every week. In that case, the right move is not a global blocklist (blacklist). It is a channel preference or lower-frequency email segment.
Open-only filtering
- Useful for: Finding people who have no recorded email attention across a long period.
- Weak when: The audience uses privacy-heavy clients or blocks images by default.
- Best action: Exclude from routine campaigns first, then test a winback path.
Behavior-weighted filtering
- Useful for: Protecting contacts with clicks, purchases, replies, or app activity.
- Strong when: Brevo receives events from your shop, site, product, or CRM.
- Best action: Suppress only when email and business activity are both stale.
How strict the no-open window should be
Shorter windows fit high-frequency senders. Longer windows fit low-frequency senders.
30 days
High risk
Too strict for most brands unless daily sends are normal.
90 days
Careful
Useful for frequent senders and winback triggers.
180 days
Practical
Balanced for weekly or mixed campaign calendars.
12 months
Conservative
Safe for slower senders or first cleanup projects.
How to build the segment in Brevo
Build the segment in a way that keeps false positives out. I like creating one broad unengaged segment, then a narrower suppression segment for regular campaigns. The broad segment helps you see the size of the issue. The narrower segment is what you actually exclude.
- Create base segment: Filter for contacts older than 90 days with no opens in your chosen window.
- Add send volume: Require enough received campaigns so the no-open condition means something.
- Protect active users: Exclude recent clickers, purchasers, app users, support responders, or high-value accounts.
- Run winback: Send a short reactivation sequence before permanent suppression. Brevo has a Brevo winback workflow pattern for this.
- Review monthly: Check how many contacts enter and leave the segment before scaling exclusions.
Stronger suppression segment
Created more than 90 days ago AND Received at least 5 campaigns in 6 months AND Opened 0 campaigns in 6 months AND Clicked 0 campaigns in 6 months AND No purchase, reply, or app event in 6 months
Use AND logic
If your filter uses OR between received campaigns and no opens, you can pull in contacts who only meet one weak condition. The safest suppression segment requires all conditions to be true at the same time.
There is also a practical Brevo-specific concern: some users question whether the standard unengaged segment catches new contacts too early. That is why I prefer adding an explicit creation-date guard instead of relying on a default segment alone. The Brevo community question shows the exact type of confusion this avoids.
When to exclude, suppress, or blocklist
Do not jump straight to deletion. In Brevo, blocklisting keeps the historical record and prevents accidental re-import. For most teams, the first action is campaign exclusion, the second is a winback sequence, and the final action is a marketing blocklist or blacklist entry for people who remain silent.
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No opens | Exclude | Medium |
No clicks | Lower cadence | Medium |
No events | Winback | Low |
Bounced | Blocklist | Low |
Match the action to the strength of the signal.
Before you roll out the segment across every campaign, send test messages through the same domain, sender, and template family. If the test shows authentication problems, spam-folder placement, or broken content, fix those before blaming the contact list. You can send a real test email and inspect the result before sending to a large suppressed or reactivation group.
Email tester
Send a real email to this address. Suped opens the report when the test is ready.
?/43tests passed
Preparing test address...
If the test is clean, move gradually. Exclude the segment from routine newsletters first. Then send a low-pressure re-engagement campaign to a portion of the suppressed group. If opens remain absent and clicks or business events are also absent, move those contacts out of regular marketing.
For policy timing, the key question is how long a subscriber can be silent before sending hurts more than it helps. A separate framework for when to remove inactive subscribers is useful when leadership wants a fixed rule.
How Suped fits beside Brevo
Brevo is where you build the recipient segment. Suped's product handles the adjacent deliverability layer: DMARC, SPF, DKIM, hosted SPF, hosted MTA-STS, alerts, and domain reputation monitoring. The difference matters because a bad open rate can come from list fatigue, but it can also come from authentication failures or reputation damage.
For teams sending through Brevo plus other sources, Suped is the best overall fit for DMARC monitoring because it shows which services are passing authentication, which are failing, and what to fix. It also brings blocklist monitoring into the same workflow, so sender health checks do not sit in a separate process.
Suped DMARC dashboard showing email volume, authentication health, and source breakdown
Where Suped helps
- Authentication: Find DMARC, SPF, and DKIM failures that can depress engagement.
- Issue steps: Turn noisy report data into clear fixes for each sending source.
- Hosted records: Manage SPF and DMARC changes without repeated DNS edits.
- Multi-domain work: Give agencies and MSPs one place to monitor many client domains.
This does not replace Brevo segmentation. It prevents a false diagnosis. If authentication is failing, tightening an unengaged filter treats the symptom while the real delivery problem keeps damaging the sender. Fix the domain layer first, then judge opens and other engagement signals.
A practical decision flow
The cleanest process is to separate measurement, exclusion, and permanent suppression. Each step should reduce risk before the next one. A contact who has not opened email for 180 days is not automatically worthless, but a contact with no opens, no clicks, no app events, no purchases, and no reply history is a strong suppression candidate.
Flowchart for deciding whether to exclude or blocklist no-open contacts.
I would also split active customers who ignore email into a separate group. They can get product-critical messages, transactional messages, and occasional lifecycle messages, while routine newsletters pause. For dormant contacts, use re-engagement sending with smaller batches, clear preference options, and a hard stop if there is no response.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Require both enough received campaigns and enough account age before calling a contact inactive.
Keep app-active or purchase-active contacts out of routine email suppression segments.
Use a winback sequence before final blocklisting, especially for customers with prior value.
Common pitfalls
Do not use one missed campaign as a suppression rule, especially after a weak subject line.
Do not treat opens as complete proof of interest when privacy proxies affect reporting.
Do not let default unengaged segments catch new contacts without an age safeguard.
Expert tips
Use longer no-open windows for monthly senders and shorter windows for frequent senders.
Compare no-open groups against clicks and app events before shrinking active audiences.
Audit authentication and reputation before assuming poor opens come only from list fatigue.
Marketer from Email Geeks says unengaged filters should account for the ESP, the activity event available, and the number of messages received.
2024-12-16 - Email Geeks
Marketer from Email Geeks says a Brevo filter using at least three emails received and no opens over a year is a reasonable baseline.
2024-12-17 - Email Geeks
The filter to start with
I would start with the conservative Brevo filter: created more than 90 days ago, received at least 3 campaigns in the last 12 months, and opened 0 campaigns in the last 12 months. For weekly senders, move to at least 5 campaigns received in 6 months and no opens in 6 months. For daily or high-volume senders, test a 90-day rule on a small segment before using it broadly.
Keep people with recent clicks, purchases, replies, or app activity out of the hard suppression pool. Opens are useful for hygiene, not precise enough to be the only removal rule. Once the segment is stable, exclude it from routine campaigns, run a winback path, then blocklist contacts who remain inactive across email and business activity.
