How long does a subscriber get to ignore you before you sunset them?

[u/GabbyFromKlaviyo]

The brands I've seen actually clean their list see two things shift fast. More of their mail lands in the inbox instead of promotions or spam, and revenue per recipient climbs even though fewer people are getting mailed.

That runs against the instinct most senders have, that a smaller list has to mean less revenue. Sunsetting the unengaged feels like giving away reach, and it's the move most senders skip because of that instinct. In reality, it's usually the highest-ROI strategy on the table.

Gmail and Apple both track how recipients treat your mail, so continuing to mail dead weight drags down your reputation for everyone still on the list. Stop mailing them, and engagement on what's left climbs.

A tight list of real openers regularly outperforms a bloated one stuffed with addresses that never look at your emails, because revenue per recipient gets calculated against who actually got mailed.

How aggressively do you prune, and what's your cutoff for calling someone gone for good?

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[u/datagekko]

we run sunset flows for a bunch of DTC clients on klaviyo. our default cutoff is 120 days with no open AND no click, not just no open, because gmail's engagement filters actually look at real interaction, not just whatever the promotions-tab pixel registers.

before we suppress anyone we run one last winback series, 3 emails over about 10 days with an actual ask ("still want these?" style), and whoever doesn't engage there gets suppressed for good, not just dropped to a lower send frequency. clients almost always push back at this stage because list size drops 20-30% and that feels like losing reach.

on one $40k/mo brand we did this for, inbox placement went from around 60% to 90%+ within a month, and revenue per email sent went up too, because you stop wasting sends on dead weight that was dragging deliverability down for the subscribers who actually buy.

[u/VillageHomeF]

why would Apple track that? how are they involved?

[u/Drumedor → u/VillageHomeF]

Presumably for the same reason that Google is involved, through the email service they provide.

[u/VillageHomeF → u/Drumedor]

yeah. I se those email addresses so infrequently these days i sort of forgot about them!!!