Inactive contacts: reactivate or delete?
A large list feels like reach. In fact, contacts who have opened nothing for a year lower the delivery rate for everyone else — and in tiered plans they cost money every month.
In short
- Inactive means: no response over a period matching your sending rhythm — with monthly sending, around twelve months.
- A reactivation consists of two messages, not five — and the second announces the end.
- Anyone not responding gets stopped. That measurably improves the delivery rate for everyone else.
- Deleting is often not merely sensible but required: data with no purpose may not be kept indefinitely.
When a contact is inactive
The definition has to match your own sending rhythm. Writing four times a year, you cannot speak of inactivity after six months — the contact has barely had a chance to respond.
| Sending rhythm | Inactive from | Response means |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 6 months | a click or a reply |
| Monthly | 12 months | a click or a reply |
| Quarterly | 18 months | a click or a reply |
Worth knowing
Inactive contacts do harm beyond their cost — they lower the delivery rate for everyone else. Mailbox providers take into account how many recipients actually engage with your messages. A high share of recipients who never respond acts as a signal for unwanted mail.
An uncomfortable consequence follows: fail to clean the list and over time you reach the active recipients less well too. A maintained list of 800 contacts arrives more reliably than an unmaintained one of 3,000 — and therefore reaches more people in the end.
Reactivation in two messages
Message 1 — the honest question
Content: we have been writing to you for a while without a response from you. Do you want to keep receiving messages? One click is enough.
Rule: one link confirming continuation. No offer, no discount, no list of what they are missing.
Message 2 — the announcement
Content: two weeks later: we are stopping our sends to you. If you want to keep them, click here.
Rule: no reproach, no last sales attempt. The announcement itself is the effective part.
Afterwards
Anyone who has not clicked gets stopped — no further sends. The contact stays in the system as long as another purpose exists, for instance an ongoing business relationship.
What does not work
Five messages with rising urgency, discounts as a reactivation incentive, or the subject line "we miss you". All three read as desperation and raise the number of spam reports.
When to delete
Stopping and deleting are two different things. Sending gets stopped; data gets deleted. For the latter there are legal requirements, not merely practical considerations.
- The purpose has ceased. Personal data may be kept only as long as a purpose exists. A contact who has not responded for two years and is in no business relationship has none.
- Consent has been withdrawn. Then deletion applies, unless another basis exists. The unsubscribe itself gets documented so no further sending happens.
- Deletion has been requested. Then the deadline applies — regardless of how much you would have liked to keep the contact.
The resistance to cleaning up is always the same: "maybe something will come of it after all." The arithmetic against it is simple — a contact who has not clicked once in eighteen months will not click on the nineteenth message either.
What actually happens is the opposite: the delivery rate for everyone else falls, and the growing share of inactive recipients depresses the effect of every single message. Clean up and you lose list size and gain reach — that is not a contradiction but the mechanism behind it.
Help me handle inactive contacts. Our situation: - Contacts in total: [number] - Sending rhythm: [weekly / monthly / quarterly] - Contacts with a click or reply in the last 12 months: [number] - Do we pay by contact count? [yes / no] - Do we keep an unsubscribe list? [yes / no] - Do we document consents with a date? [yes / no] Tasks: 1. Settle from when a contact counts as inactive at our rhythm, and justify it. 2. From my figures, estimate how large our inactive group is and what it costs us annually if we pay by contact count. 3. Phrase the two reactivation messages: the honest question and the announcement. Each under 100 words, one link, no discount, no "we miss you". 4. Tell me which contacts should be stopped after the reactivation and which deleted – and how I tell them apart. 5. Name what has to be preserved from the unsubscribe list so a later import does not recreate the contact. 6. Name the data protection points to observe in this. Do not invent figures about our list.
In closing
Two messages, then stop. No discount, no rising urgency, no fifth reminder — the honest question and the announced ending work better than any incentive.
And the loss of list size is none: clean up and you reach the remaining recipients more reliably. On deleting, what decides is not preference anyway but whether a purpose still exists.
Common questions
From when does a contact count as inactive?
That depends on the sending rhythm: with weekly sending after around six months, with monthly after twelve, with quarterly after eighteen. A click or a reply counts as a response — not an open, which since the preloading of images is to a considerable extent a technical event.
Why do inactive contacts do harm?
They lower the delivery rate for everyone else, because mailbox providers take into account how many recipients actually engage with the messages. On top of that they cost money every month in plans priced by contact count. A maintained list of 800 contacts reaches more people in the end than an unmaintained one of 3,000.
What does a good reactivation look like?
Two messages: first the honest question whether further messages are wanted, with a single confirmation link; two weeks later the announcement that sending will stop. No discount, no rising urgency, no "we miss you" — all of that reads as desperation and raises spam reports.
What is the difference between stopping and deleting?
Sending gets stopped — the contact stays in the system as long as another purpose exists, such as an ongoing business relationship. Data gets deleted when no purpose remains, when a consent has been withdrawn, or when deletion is requested.
Can you delete everything?
Not the unsubscribe record. The fact that an address wants no mail has to be preserved so a later import does not recreate the contact. Everything else gets deleted — the unsubscribe list is not a contradiction of deletion but the precondition for doing it properly.
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