Get prospects to the call and run it 24 of 25 in this group
SOP 278
Prune the email list: ask who still wants it, then remove the rest
What this page is for. Use it when email brings in less than it used to, when open rates have sagged, or when your list has only ever grown. It carries why a list loses value as it ages, the cycle a stale list sets off with the companies that deliver your mail, the numbers to write down before you start, three short emails that ask people whether they still want to hear from you, removing everyone who stays silent, the comparison a week later, an example of what the change might look like, and answers to the usual reasons for not doing it. Why email is worth sending, and how to write it, are SOP 254 — Nurture by email and book the next meeting months out.
SOP-278-Prune-the-email-list-ask-who-still-wants-it-then-remove-the-rest.md
1. A list wears out
The view here is that your email list is probably leaking revenue right now, and that the fix is simple, and runs against intuition, as effective things in business tend to.
A lot of owners talk about an email list as the one asset they own, set against the attention they rent on every other platform. It is owned, in the view here, but it does not gain value. It decays and depreciates.
The breakdown given. Take 100 addresses. After one year, 23 percent of them will have stopped responding, even if you send nothing but excellent email; that is simply how email works, it is said. Two years in, the number is 59. The loss compounds, year on year. Where the breakdown comes from is not named; it is offered as a real, average one. What the 59 means is taken up in section 10.
What that means for an old list. If your list is five years old, it is probably very unlikely that those who signed up at the start still read what you send today.
The refrigerator. Picture a fridge you never throw anything out of. Food goes bad, and quickly. A list you never clean goes the same way.
2. How a stale list drags down the rest of it
Addresses go dead: people stop using them or delete them. Once that happens, fewer of your messages reach the inbox, more of them land in spam, some of the companies that deliver mail block you outright, and more of your sends bounce.
The cycle. One step feeds the next, especially if you never clean the list:
- Dead addresses sit on your list.
- Then open rates fall and bounce rates rise.
- Then the companies that deliver email start to treat you as spam.
- Then your good subscribers, the ones who want your email, stop receiving it.
- Then revenue from email drops.
Then it keeps sliding, and the owner concludes that email has stopped working as it once did. The view here is that the cycle is speeding up, and that this is good news for anyone who cleans the list: competitors who never do will be hit harder by it than you are.
3. Size is not the measure
Ask yourself which you would rather have: a list of 1,000 or a list of 50,000. It is a trick question, because it turns on who the people are. A thousand subscribers who open and click everything you send are worth far more than fifty thousand who never see a single email.
So stop measuring yourself by how many people are on the list. The view here is that only ego keeps an owner attached to that number. What counts is how many are clean, active and engaged, and that number can be much smaller than the total, above all on a list that has been around a while.
4. Before you start: write down where you stand
Write down your open rate and your click rate as they stand today. You will set the same figures beside these a week after the cleanup (section 7).
5. Send three emails asking whether they still want to hear from you
Two things are named as the fix. The first is a re-engagement campaign: three simple emails whose whole job is to ask whether the reader still wants to hear from you.
The fear, and the answer to it. Owners worry that a note asking readers if they want more from you invites them to unsubscribe. If a reader has lost interest in you, you want them gone: while they stay, they stand between you and the people who do want to hear from you. That is the central point of the whole exercise.
| Order | The email | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | We miss you | Checks in warmly, reminds them of the value they get, and offers one very easy click |
| 2 | Last chance | Shows them what they will miss |
| 3 | We are cleaning up | A last word before they come off the list |
The work inside your email software, which buttons to press and where, is not covered here. One practice here is to have an AI tool walk you through each step, after telling it plainly which email platform you use.
6. Remove everyone who stayed silent
Once all three emails have gone out, retire the addresses that did not respond to any of them. Nobody responded? Take them off the list. This removal reads as the second of the two things named in section 5.
7. Compare a week later
A week after the cleanup, look at the open rate and the click rate again, and set them beside the figures you wrote down in section 4. The goal set here is to see the difference within that week.
8. What it might look like
What follows is how it might turn out: this is an example, not a measured case. Some of you might feel your stomach drop at the size of the cut.
| Before the cleanup | After it | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribers | 50,000 | 12,000 |
| Open rate | 8 percent | 35 percent |
| Where email lands | 45 percent in spam | 92 percent in the inbox |
| Revenue from email | Low | Rising |
The cycle runs the other way. More of your email reaches the inbox. Open and click rates climb. The same effort brings more sales. Your standing as a sender recovers, and the subscribers who want your email begin to see it. A smaller list, and more money from it.
How sure the result is. Results may vary. The claim made is that you can see the improvement right away.
9. The objections, and the answers given
Here are some of the likely objections to doing this, with an answer to each.
"I would rather keep my subscribers." They are gone already: they stopped paying attention. Removing them cuts dead weight that is costing you now, and taking away a negative leaves you with a positive.
"It took me years to build this list." That does not change the answer. A list needs cleaning again and again, the way a tree needs pruning.
"What if they come back later?" Think of the newsletters you probably read now, maybe two or three, against all the ones you have signed up for in your life. People drift away and drift back: they see a post or an article, and they sign up again, having forgotten they ever had. One practice here is to treat someone who signs up again almost as a new lead, because having held their address once no longer matters once they stopped paying attention. It works the way a social platform does: follow someone and then never engage with what they post, and the platform stops showing it to you. Email does the same.
"This is too tactical." An AI tool can take you through each click in your email software (section 5).
"My email platform is different." Tell the tool which platform you are on; the walk-through adapts to it.
"Could I not just write better emails?" Better emails cannot fix delivery, because nobody is seeing it. If your email is landing in spam, the finest writing in the world will not rescue your open rate. Clean the list first.
"I paid to get these people." That money is spent whatever you do now. You never bought anyone's attention; you rented it, and the rent falls due every day. Somewhere along the line the rent went unpaid, and you were evicted. Accept it, and hope to win them back.
"My open rate is already 35 to 45 percent." You can still run this. In the view here, a list cannot be too clean, and pruning it still gets you more from fewer people.
10. What this page does not decide for you
- What the 59 measures. If the 59 is the share of addresses still responding after two years, it fits a loss of 23 percent a year (77 percent of 77 percent is about 59 percent). If it is the share lost, it does not fit. Not established on this page.
- How long the job takes. Several figures are given: less than 90, with no unit; probably 30 minutes or less; less than 30 minutes for each of the two things; and probably 10. This page gives no single figure for the time it takes.
- Who gets the three emails. Whether they go to the whole list or only to people who have stopped opening is not established on this page.
- What counts as responding. Opening, clicking or replying: not established on this page.
- How often to clean the list. It is to be done again and again. This page gives no figure for how often.
11. The checklist
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Write down today's open rate and click rate |
| 2 | Send the first email, "we miss you": check in warmly, remind them what they get, give one easy click |
| 3 | Send the second, "last chance": show what they will miss |
| 4 | Send the third, "we are cleaning up": a last word |
| 5 | Take off every address that responded to none of the three |
| 6 | After a week, set the new open and click rates beside step 1 |
| 7 | Treat anyone who signs up again almost as a new lead (one practice here) |
| 8 | Clean the list again, even when open rates are already high |
12. Where this sits
- Why email earns its place, and how to assemble each email: SOP 254 — Nurture by email and book the next meeting months out.
- Reminding customers to buy again by email: SOP 235 — Get customers to buy again: make it good, onboard, remind, section 6.
- Writing more specific emails to each segment of the list: SOP 165 — Pick a second acquisition channel, section 7.
- An open-rate figure for cold outbound email: SOP 29 — Set outreach volume, section 10.
13. What this page does not cover
Email software settings and email law are not covered on this page. Segmenting a list is on SOP 165, section 7.
Terms defined on this page
- Re-engagement campaign
- Three short emails (we miss you, last chance, we are cleaning up) asking whether readers still want to hear from you. Everyone who answers none of them is then taken off the list.