Should I remove unengaged subscribers from my newsletter list?
Short answer
Often, yes. Inbox providers read low engagement as a spam signal, so a big block of people who never open can push everyone else out of the primary inbox. On a 12,000-person list of mine, about 3,900 hadn't engaged in 90 days. Cutting them leaves about 8,000, still a good number, and I was leaning toward doing it.
One of my newsletters had about 12,000 subscribers. A deliverability expert went through it and told me roughly 3,900 hadn't engaged in the last 90 days. That's about a third of the list doing nothing.
Why would you delete subscribers you paid for?
Because they're costing you the subscribers who do read. If Google and other email providers see low engagement from a lot of people, they assume you're spam and don't put you in the primary inbox.
"If you delete those people... That drops me to eight, which is still a good number, so I might actually do that."
Eight thousand engaged readers in the primary inbox beats 12,000 where a third of them are dragging you into promotions or spam.
What should you report as your subscriber count?
Active subscribers. I've had over 200,000 subscribers in total across my brands, and I've cut inactive ones along the way. When I put a number on a website, I use active subscribers as the defined metric, because that's the honest claim.
Should you remove them or just stop sending to them?
Two levels:
- Send mainly to recent openers when a list's open rate falls to about 30% to 33%. Fast and reversible.
- Remove people with no engagement in 90 days when a deliverability review shows a large inactive block.
What causes a big inactive block?
A few things I've seen:
- Gaps in sending. A brand that ran ads for eight weeks before its first real issue started 10 to 15 points behind on opens.
- Very cheap, fast growth. My cheapest-to-acquire list is also my only weak opener at 28% to 30%. I don't claim one causes the other.
- Scale. At a certain size, if you're not doing things correctly, the whole thing can blow up.
Does cleaning the list hurt growth?
Not if you keep acquiring. Lists shrink on their own as people unsubscribe and fall off. A guest on my podcast paused ads for a few months to focus on sponsorships and watched the list slide toward under 10,000. Keep a floor of acquisition running while you clean, and the list keeps growing in the people who matter.
Answered by TJ Larkin. From Local Media HQ podcast episodes and client and partner calls in 2025 and 2026. Last updated .