Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / How Marketing Automation Workflows Leak Revenue Through Inactive Contacts
Transcript
- Lucas: So we talk a lot on this show about building workflows — triggers, actions, conditional branches. But here's a question that doesn't get asked enough: what happens to the contacts inside those workflows who just… stop engaging? Luna: Right — the inactive ones. The people who opened your first three emails, then went radio silent for six months. Lucas: Exactly. And the answer is, in most automated systems, nothing happens. They just keep getting the same emails as everyone else. And that's actually a problem — a revenue problem — because inactive contacts quietly degrade every metric you care about. Luna: Let me guess — deliverability takes a hit first. Lucas: That's the first domino. When a large portion of your list hasn't opened an email in three or four months, mailbox providers notice. Your sender reputation drops. A HubSpot study from late last year showed that senders with engagement rates below 15 percent saw inbox placement fall by nearly 30 percent. So suddenly the people who do want your emails aren't getting them. Luna: And your automation is essentially paying — in send volume and reputation — to annoy people who already checked out. Lucas: Exactly. I worked with a B2B SaaS company last year — about 80,000 contacts in their HubSpot portal. They'd been running a standard lead-nurture workflow for over two years. Turns out, 34 percent of those contacts hadn't opened a single email in the prior nine months. They were dead weight. Luna: Did they clean it up? Lucas: They did. They added a suppression list — anyone with zero opens in the last six months and no form fill or event attendance got moved to a separate 'sunset' workflow that sent a single re-engagement email. If no click within 14 days, they were tagged as inactive and excluded from all future campaigns. Luna: And what happened to the numbers? Lucas: In the first quarter after the cleanup, their overall open rate went from 18 percent to 27 percent. Click-through rate doubled. And — this is the part that gets finance's attention — attributed revenue from email increased 22 percent. Not because they sent more. Because the people receiving the emails were actually the right people. Luna: That's a huge lift from just taking stuff away. And I bet the sales team didn't even complain because the leads that went to them were warmer. Lucas: They actually thanked marketing. Because the leads coming in had recent engagement signals. Meanwhile, the inactive segment got a farewell email with a link to resubscribe. Some did come back — about 8 percent — but most didn't. And that's fine. Luna: So the question becomes: how do you define 'inactive' in a way that's fair but also effective? Because six months of no opens might be too aggressive for some industries. Lucas: Totally. That's the nuance. I'd say the best approach is to use a combination of recency and engagement score. If someone's engagement score — based on opens, clicks, site visits, form fills — drops below a threshold and it's been more than, say, 90 days since their last positive action, they're a candidate for sunsetting. Luna: So it's not a one-size-fits-all number. It depends on your typical sales cycle and content cadence. Lucas: Exactly. A B2B company selling enterprise software with a nine-month deal cycle can afford to let a lead marinate longer. A direct to consumer brand with a weekly newsletter should be more aggressive. The key is to have a policy — and enforce it programmatically. Luna: And that policy should live inside the automation itself. Not a manual review once a year. Lucas: Right. You can build a monthly or quarterly workflow that checks every contact against your inactivity criteria and automatically moves them to a suppression list or a re-engagement track. That way it's not dependent on someone remembering to do it. Luna: Before we go deeper into how to set those thresholds, I want to circle back to something you said earlier — about this being a revenue problem. It seems like a lot of marketers don't think of list hygiene as a revenue driver. They see it as, I don't know, janitorial work. Lucas: Yeah, it's seen as boring. But the numbers are clear. If you're running automation, inactive contacts are like a leak in a pipe. You don't see it dripping, but your water bill is higher. In this case, your email-attributed revenue is lower than it could be. And fixing it is almost free — you're just removing noise. Luna: It's also a cost issue. If you're on a platform that charges per contact — like Marketo or HubSpot's Marketing Hub — every inactive contact is costing you money every month. So cleaning them out is literally cutting a recurring expense. Lucas: Yeah. That's a point I should have led with. The company I mentioned was on HubSpot Enterprise, which is billed per contact. They were paying for about 27,000 inactive profiles. At roughly $0.05 per contact per month, that's over $16,000 a year in wasted spend. After the cleanup, they saved that money and got better performance. Luna: That's a hard number to ignore. So for anyone listening who manages a marketing automation platform — whether it's HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, whatever — the first step is really just an audit. Pull a list of contacts who haven't engaged in the last six months. See how big that number is. Lucas: Exactly. And then decide on your re-engagement strategy. Some companies use a single email with a strong subject line like 'Still interested?' Others use a three-email series with a small incentive. But the most important thing is to have a cutoff point. If they don't respond, remove them from active workflows. Luna: And what about contacts who are inactive but have a high lead score from earlier engagement? Like someone who downloaded a whitepaper two years ago and then went dark. Lucas: Great question. That's where the recency component matters. A high lead score from old activity doesn't mean they're still in market. I'd argue that any score over six months old should be decayed — automatically reduced over time. Most CRMs allow for score decay settings. If yours doesn't, a workflow can recalculate the score periodically based on recent activity. Luna: So stale scores are another form of revenue leakage. Sales might be chasing leads that were hot two years ago but are cold now. Lucas: Exactly. And that wastes both marketing and sales time. So the audit should cover not just email engagement but also website visits, content downloads, event attendance — anything that indicates active interest. If none of those have happened in, say, 180 days, that contact is effectively dormant. Luna: Let me shift gears slightly. What about compliance? Inactive contacts can also pose a risk under GDPR or can spam if you keep sending to people who haven't engaged in years. Some regulators consider that a sign that consent may have lapsed. Lucas: That's a really important point. In the EU, legitimate interest can erode over time. If someone hasn't opened an email in two years, it's hard to argue they still have an expectation of being contacted. So a clean list isn't just good for performance — it's a risk mitigation measure. Luna: Good. So the business case is solid: better deliverability, lower costs, higher revenue, less compliance risk. And it all starts with defining what inactivity means for your specific audience. Lucas: Yeah. And then building that definition into your automation so it runs on autopilot. That's the beauty of marketing automation — it can handle this kind of ongoing maintenance without manual effort. Luna: Alright, so if someone is building that workflow today, what are the key steps? Give us a quick checklist. Lucas: Sure. Step one: pull a report of all contacts with no email opens, no clicks, no form submissions, and no website visits in the last six months. Step two: segment that list into 'recently inactive' and 'long-term inactive' — say, 6 to 12 months vs. over 12 months. Step three: create a re-engagement workflow for the recently inactive group. Step four: for long-term inactive, either suppress them entirely or move them to a very low-touch nurture with a clear unsubscribe option. Step five: monitor the impact on your key metrics over the next 60 days. Luna: And for the recently inactive, what's a good re-engagement email look like? I've seen some pretty cringey ones. Lucas: Keep it simple. Subject line: 'Haven't heard from you lately' or 'Still there?' Body: two sentences max, a clear call to action — update preferences, read a new article, or just click to stay active. And a prominent unsubscribe link. If they don't click within 14 days, suppress. Luna: That feels respectful. Not aggressive. I think that's key — you don't want to antagonize someone who might come back later. Lucas: Exactly. If they resubscribe later, they come back into the fold. But while they're dormant, don't let them drag down your metrics or your costs. Luna: So to sum up — inactive contacts are a silent drain. Fixing it is low effort, high impact, and it keeps your automation honest. Lucas: That's a good way to put it. Honest automation — meaning you're only messaging people who actually want to hear from you. That's the goal.