What are the best filters for identifying unengaged contacts in Brevo, focusing on email opens?
Published 21 Apr 2025
Updated 17 Oct 2026
14 min read
Summarize with
Updated on 17 Oct 2026: We updated the Brevo filter steps and added guidance on dynamic exclusions, privacy opens, and French tracking-consent rules.
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 a conservative starting point, use contacts created more than 90 days ago who received at least 3 campaigns in the last 12 months and have no recorded campaign opens in that period. Use contact-level events, rather than the campaign's average open rate, to identify inactive subscribers.
These thresholds are examples to test against your sending frequency, not Brevo defaults. Apple Mail Privacy Protection, image blocking, and privacy proxies can 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 email campaigns in 12 months and recorded no campaign opens in the same period.
- Age guard: Exclude contacts created in the last 60 to 90 days so new subscribers have time to engage.
- 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 list-cleaning guidance points users to CRM > Contacts > Add filter > Contact attributes > Engagement status > Unengaged. Change the criteria under Unengaged Contacts settings. Brevo also documents recipient filtering at the campaign's To step under Advanced options > Filter recipients. The predefined segment is useful, but a custom segment gives an open-focused cleanup rule visible timing and volume thresholds. Brevo documents the cleanup workflow in Brevo list cleaning.
Conservative Brevo segment
Marketing > Email > Email campaigns subscriptions > Subscribed AND Contact attributes > Creation date > More than > 90 days AND Marketing > Email > Email received > Email campaign > At least > 3 times > In the last > 12 months AND Marketing > 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. Creation date means when the contact was added to Brevo, so use a reliable signup-date attribute if an import makes that date misleading. Missing pre-import events or disabled tracking are gaps in evidence, not proof of inactivity.
Set both email conditions to Email campaign and use the same lookback period. If you narrow the received condition by campaign name or tag, apply the same scope to Email not opened. This keeps newsletter inactivity separate from transactional activity. Use Email received rather than Email sent: a send attempt without delivery does not give someone a chance to open.
Open data has known measurement limits. If you see unexplained changes or mismatches between open behavior and business activity, review how bot and proxy opens affect reporting before you remove a large group.
Brevo segment editor with contact age, emails received, and no-open filters.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
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 |
Illustrative starting points to test against sending frequency and available history, not official Brevo presets.
For a low-frequency newsletter, a 12-month window gives subscribers more opportunities to engage. For a weekly ecommerce sender, test a 6-month no-open window with at least 5 received campaigns. Adjust the minimum received count to reflect the actual number of campaigns sent, and account for seasonal purchasing before shortening the window. Brevo's re-engagement example uses at least 3 campaigns received and no opens over 3 months; treat that shorter window as a winback trigger, not an automatic blocklisting rule.
Why opens need guardrails
Opens still work for broad engagement hygiene, but only with guardrails. An open is recorded when a tracking pixel loads, so the metric depends on the mail client, image loading, privacy behavior, and how Brevo classifies the event. Brevo describes its predefined unengaged filters as customizable and based on clicks and conversions. In custom Email opened and Email not opened conditions, check whether Apple MPP Opens are included. Including automatic opens can hide inactive contacts; excluding them can place active Apple Mail readers in a no-open segment. Keep the setting consistent and review other activity before suppression. Bot clicks also distort engagement, so a click alone is not always evidence of human interest.
The biggest mistake is treating email silence as customer silence. A user can ignore marketing email and still log into an app every week. For those users, use channel preferences or a lower-frequency email segment before considering a marketing blocklist (blacklist).
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
Illustrative review windows. Choose a window using campaign frequency, seasonality, available tracking history, and other engagement signals.
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
A starting point to test for weekly or mixed campaign calendars.
12 months
Conservative
A longer review window for slower senders or first cleanup projects.
Check consent before using opens in France
Where French tracking rules apply, do not assume every tracking pixel can feed an open-based segment. The CNIL's April 2026 recommendation requires consent for campaign-performance tracking and personalization, subject to its exemptions and transitional arrangements.
A narrow deliverability exemption applies when tracking is limited to what is strictly necessary to adjust frequency or stop email to inactive recipients, and the email relates to a service they explicitly requested. The CNIL generally recommends retaining only the date of the latest known open, without the time, and replacing the previous date. Additional data or campaign optimization requires a separate assessment; the exemption is not blanket permission for routine open analytics.
For addresses collected before April 14, 2026, the standard deadline to inform recipients and offer an objection was July 14, 2026. The CNIL allows a reasonable extension for documented operational difficulties. Without a compliant transition or an exemption, stop tracking that requires consent until valid consent is recorded. Where recipients were properly informed and did not object, continued reliance on that arrangement depends on unchanged sending conditions.
- Document each pixel's purpose and whether it qualifies for an exemption.
- Record valid tracking consent or the applicable exemption or transitional basis before using individual open data.
- Keep an exempt deliverability pixel limited to frequency control or stopping email to inactive contacts.
- Use lawfully collected purchase, reply, and account activity when open tracking is unavailable. Click and website tracking have their own requirements.
Do not equate no consent with no engagement
A missing open event can mean the contact did not consent to tracking. Keep those contacts out of an automatic no-open blocklist or blacklist unless other inactivity signals support the decision. Newsletter permission and tracking consent are separate checks.
How to build the segment in Brevo
Build the segment in a way that keeps false positives out. In Brevo, go to CRM > Contacts > Segments, choose Create a segment, then create it from scratch. Create one broad unengaged segment, then a narrower suppression segment for regular campaigns. The broad segment shows the size of the issue. The narrower segment is what you exclude.
- Create base segment: Start with contacts subscribed to email campaigns, then filter for contact age and 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 to contacts still eligible for marketing, and stop it when they respond. Brevo has a Brevo winback workflow pattern for this.
- Review monthly: Sample matching contact histories, check the segment count, and compare complaints and unsubscribe rates before scaling exclusions.
Stronger suppression logic, expressed as a checklist
Subscribed to email campaigns AND Created more than 90 days ago AND Received at least 5 campaigns in 6 months AND Recorded 0 campaign opens in 6 months AND Clicked no campaign links in 6 months AND No recorded purchase, reply, or app activity in 6 months
For clicks, use Marketing > Email > Link not clicked in an email with the same campaign scope and period. Add ecommerce or custom-event conditions only when those events are actually synced to Brevo. The checklist is business logic, not a single Brevo filter path: an unconfigured integration does not prove that no purchase, reply, or app activity occurred.
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. Require all inactivity conditions to be true at the same time, then exclude anyone with recent qualifying activity.
There is also a practical Brevo-specific concern: some users question whether the standard unengaged segment catches new contacts too early. Add 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.
Keep the unengaged segment dynamic
Save the filters as a segment and use it in the campaign's Don't send to selection. Brevo updates segment membership automatically as contacts meet or stop meeting the conditions. An exported CSV or a copied list is a snapshot, so it will miss later engagement unless you update it.
Brevo's legacy dynamic lists became static on January 1, 2025. Recreate their rules as segments if you still rely on one for inactive-subscriber exclusions. You do not need to copy contacts between lists just to keep a no-open segment current.
- Use relative periods such as In the last 6 months for an ongoing inactivity rule. Fixed dates describe a historical cohort.
- Check that a recent qualifying open or click removes the contact from the relevant inactivity segment. Leaving a segment does not resubscribe a blocklisted contact.
- Watch for received events aging out of the rolling window. A contact can stop matching the minimum-volume rule without re-engaging.
- Keep a persistent marketing-suppression record for contacts you have retired, so a changing segment does not return them to routine campaigns.
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 eligible subscribers, start with campaign exclusion, test a winback sequence, and use a marketing blocklist or blacklist for contacts who remain inactive. Marketing and transactional blocklists have different scopes in Brevo; check the selected channel before applying a bulk action. Unsubscribed contacts and spam complainants must stay excluded from winback sends.
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
No recorded opens | Review or exclude from routine campaigns | Check tracking availability and other activity |
No opens or clicks across enough received campaigns | Test lower frequency or winback | Confirm marketing eligibility and event coverage |
No verified response to winback | Apply marketing suppression | Check recent customer activity before a final blocklist action |
Hard bounce | Brevo automatically blocklists the address | Confirm the permanent delivery error |
Soft bounce | Review the temporary delivery error | Do not treat one soft bounce as permanent inactivity |
Match the action to the strength of the signal.
Before you roll out the segment across every campaign, send test messages through the same sending domain and template family. If the test shows authentication or content problems, fix them before blaming the contact list. A successful test does not establish inbox placement across your audience. You can send a real test email and inspect the result before a small reactivation test with eligible subscribers.
Email tester
Send a real email to this address. Suped shows a results button when the test is ready.
?/43tests passed
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 excluded group that remains subscribed. If there is no verified response or recent business activity, move those contacts out of regular marketing. Compare click-through rate and conversions alongside spam complaints and unsubscribes; a higher open rate after exclusion does not prove that inbox placement improved.
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 DMARC and email authentication platform helps review sending sources and authentication failures alongside blocklist status. 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's DMARC monitoring shows which services pass authentication, which fail, and what needs attention. Suped's blocklist monitoring keeps blocklist and blacklist status in the same domain-health workflow, so sender checks do not sit in a separate process.
Suped DMARC dashboard showing email volume, authentication health, and source breakdown
Where Suped helps
- Authentication: Use DMARC reports to investigate SPF and DKIM failures for the domains sending your Brevo campaigns.
- Issue steps: Turn noisy report data into clear fixes for each sending source.
- Hosted records: After the required DNS setup, manage hosted SPF and DMARC settings in Suped.
- Multi-domain work: Give agencies and MSPs one place to monitor many client domains.
Investigate authentication failures before interpreting low opens as subscriber inactivity. DMARC reports describe authentication results reported by receiving systems; they do not show individual opens or prove inbox placement. Use Suped for that domain-level investigation, then use Brevo for contact-level segmentation.
A practical decision flow
The cleanest process measures engagement before campaign exclusion and permanent suppression. Each step should reduce risk before the next one. Before final suppression, check other recorded activity for contacts with no opens in 180 days. With adequate sending and tracking history, inactivity across email and customer activity is a stronger suppression signal.
Decision flow for excluding, re-engaging, or blocklisting Brevo contacts with no opens.
Split active customers who ignore email into a separate group. Keep necessary transactional messages separate from marketing suppression. Occasional lifecycle marketing still requires the appropriate permission and preferences. 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 contact 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 view
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 view
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
