Latest / The Email Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Newsletters, Open Rates, and Subscriber Growth / Why Your Email List Needs a Sunset Policy
Transcript
- Lucas: Let's talk about the part of email marketing nobody wants to think about: killing your own subscribers. Not the angry ones who hit unsubscribe, but the ones who just go silent. Luna: The ones who stop opening, stop clicking, but never actually leave. They're just there, taking up space in your list. Lucas: Exactly. And the problem is, most marketers treat list size as a vanity metric. They want the number to go up every month. But if 30 percent of your list hasn't opened an email in six months, you don't have a 100,000-person audience. You have a 70,000-person audience with 30,000 ghosts. Luna: And those ghosts are hurting you. Because inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook look at engagement patterns. If a big chunk of your list never opens, your emails start landing in spam for the people who actually want them. Lucas: That's the core of why a sunset policy matters. A sunset policy is just a set of rules you create that says: if a subscriber hasn't engaged within X period, we automatically reduce their email frequency, then try to win them back, and if they still don't engage, we remove them from the list entirely. Luna: So what's the right X period? Six months? A year? Lucas: Depends on your send frequency and your industry. For a daily newsletter, I'd look at 90 days. For a weekly one, maybe six months. For a monthly email, a year is probably fine. But here's the thing: most people pick a round number without testing it. The better approach is to look at your own data and find the point where the probability of a dormant subscriber ever opening again drops below, say, five percent. Luna: I actually saw a case study from a mid-size e-commerce brand—they sell outdoor gear, think tents and backpacks. They ran a re-engagement campaign and then cut everyone who didn't respond after 90 days. They removed 18 percent of their list. Lucas: And what happened to the metrics? Luna: Within two months, their click to open rate went up 12 percent. Their overall open rate went from 22 percent to 27 percent. And their complaint rate—people marking as spam—dropped by nearly half. Lucas: That tracks with everything I've seen. And it's not just about the numbers looking better. It's about your sender reputation. If you're sending to people who don't open, that's a negative signal to the inbox providers. The more negative signals you accumulate, the harder it is to reach the people who actually want to hear from you. Luna: So what does a good sunset flow look like? Like, step by step? Lucas: Sure. Step one: define your engagement threshold. I recommend using a combination of opens and clicks. Some people use opens only, but that's risky because of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection which can inflate open rates. Better to use clicks as the primary signal, or at least require a click within the last 90 days. Step two: when someone falls below that threshold, send them a re-engagement sequence of two or three emails over maybe two weeks. Something like 'We miss you' with a small incentive—10 percent off, a free guide, whatever makes sense for your business. Luna: And if they don't respond? Lucas: Step three: send a final goodbye email. Be honest. Say 'We're going to stop emailing you unless you confirm you still want to hear from us.' Give them one last chance. If they click, they stay. If they don't, you remove them automatically. No hard feelings. Luna: And that final email—do you track if people actually open it and then do nothing? Lucas: You can, but I'd still remove them. If someone opens but doesn't click, they're still not engaged enough to justify staying on the list. You want active engagement, not passive consumption. Luna: One thing I find interesting: the outdoor gear company I mentioned—they found that most of the people they removed never complained. They didn't unsubscribe, they didn't mark as spam—they just stopped opening. And after being removed, only about 2 percent ever re-subscribed. Lucas: That's the data point that always surprises marketers. They're afraid of losing subscribers, but the truth is, if someone is truly done with your emails, they're not going to come back just because you keep sending. You're just annoying them and damaging your deliverability. Luna: So a sunset policy isn't really about losing subscribers—it's about protecting the relationship with the ones who matter. Lucas: Exactly. And if you've found these conversations helpful, if something we've discussed here has sparked an idea you've actually used in your own email strategy—that's exactly why we keep doing this show ad-free. Listener support is what makes that possible. Luna: Yeah, it keeps us independent and lets us focus on what actually works rather than what sponsors want us to say. So if the show's been valuable to you, we'd appreciate it if you'd consider buying us a coffee. Lucas: That's at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Just a simple way to say thanks and help us keep the lights on. And now back to the topic—because there's another layer to sunsetting that most people overlook. Luna: What's that? Lucas: The impact on your analytics. When you have a lot of dormant subscribers, your metrics become misleading. Your open rate looks lower than it would be if you only counted active people. Your click-through rate gets diluted. And your conversion rate—if you're tracking purchases—is being calculated against a denominator that includes people who will never buy. Luna: So you're making decisions based on bad data. Lucas: Exactly. If you think your email campaign has a 0.5 percent conversion rate, but you're sending to 100,000 people when only 70,000 are actually active, your real conversion rate among active subscribers is closer to 0.7 percent. That changes how you evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns. Luna: And it changes how you think about list growth too. Because if you're adding 5,000 new subscribers a month but also losing 3,000 to disengagement, your net active growth is only 2,000. But a lot of marketers just look at total list size and think they're growing faster than they are. Lucas: That's why I tell people to track active subscribers, not total subscribers. Define active as anyone who has opened or clicked in the last 90 days. Report that number to your boss or your investors. It's a much more honest metric. Luna: So what do you recommend as a starting point for someone who's never done any list cleaning? Lucas: First, don't panic. I wouldn't go and delete half your list in one day. Start by creating a segment of subscribers who haven't engaged in the last six months. Send them a re-engagement email today. See what happens. Then, a week later, send a second one. After that, remove anyone who still hasn't engaged. That's your first batch. Then set up an automated flow so it happens continuously going forward. Luna: And how do you handle subscribers who only open but never click? Is an open enough to count as engagement? Lucas: I'd say no, especially post-iOS 15. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection means that many opens are not real. If someone only opens but never clicks for six months, they're likely not reading your emails in a meaningful way. I'd treat opens as a secondary signal at best. Luna: So you'd rather keep someone who clicks once every three months than someone who opens every email but never clicks? Lucas: Exactly. A click is a clear signal of intent. An open is increasingly unreliable. That's why click to open rate is a better metric than open rate—it tells you how many of the people who actually saw your email found it compelling enough to act. Luna: Alright, so let's wrap with a concrete takeaway. What's the one thing a listener should do this week? Lucas: Go into your email platform and create a segment of subscribers who haven't clicked a single link in the last 90 days. Look at that number. That's your starting point. Then send them a win-back email tomorrow. And if they don't engage within two weeks, schedule a sunset campaign to remove them. Your future self will thank you. Luna: And if listeners want to dig deeper into this topic, we'll link to the outdoor gear case study in the show notes. Lucas: Good idea. For now, that's it for this episode. We'll see you next time.