How (and Why) You Should "Clean" Your Email List

Email “List Cleaning” might sound like a typo, but stay with me.

This is a wildly important, often overlooked piece of your donor retention and engagement strategy.

What is "List Cleaning?”

Removing all those email subscribers who have never or rarely open your emails. Ouch. Sounds drastic, doesn’t it? Not really.

Why should you clean your email list?

These subscribers are COLD. They have not engaged with your emails in a loooong time. At this point, they are simply vanity metrics. Let’s say you have 5,000 email subscribers on your favorite CRM (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, Mailer Lite, etc.). Now, let’s imagine that a whopping 2,000 haven’t opened one of your emails in over an 6 months!

You might be saying, “Come on, Christina, 2,000?! That’s ridiculous.”

But, it’s not.

I’ve actually experienced this with far too many nonprofits.

Their open rates, click through rates, and juicy email data is all diluted from this huge HUNK of cold subscribers.

But wait, “I want to keep them on my list!” you’ll say!

Here’s why you shouldn’t:

Click here to download!

When you tell your Executive Director, Board, or whoever, that you have 5,000 subscribers on your email list a fundraising, event ticket selling goal, attendance benchmark, or some other metric is assigned to that list. They are assigning a VALUE to that number. But that values is straight W-R-O-N-G! Why? Because 40% of your email list is NEVER seeing or hearing about your content (ahem, annual fundraiser, year end appeal, etc.).

So, you and your team will be on the hook based on a vanity metric that was far, far away from reality.

Here’s what you should do instead:

1. Think of it like “Last call!” at the bar: let’s not kick everyone off your list before seeing if they are interested in staying first

2. Put your COLD subscribers through a “Last call” email sequence: an email series to re-engage them and have them opt back into your list

3. Don’t delete! Yes, I know. You didn’t want to delete them in the first place. I get it. Depending on the email management software you use, you can “archive” instead of deleting them. That way you’ll still have their information and history should you ever need it.

PRO tip: go ahead and export a CSV file of the COLD list before taking any action. 😉

But wait, how often should you clean your list?

Well, that’s a bit of a nuance. Depending on how savvy your programs, fundraisers, and general email frequency is, we can actually scrub your list naturally throughout the year. If you’ve ever heard me talk about why people UNSUBSCRIBING is actually a good thing… this is a big reason. It’s a natural list-cleaning when someone opts-out! No hard feelings, y’all!

I would recommend calendaring it in once a year and guess what…? You can reuse that same sequence again and again, because the name of the game here is time-saving, automation resources and tools so that YOU can attract more supporters online.

Now that you know why you shouldn’t be afraid (and maybe you’re even a little excited to say “Buh-Bye” to those stagnant subscribers and “hello” to real, authentic metrics), what should you say in each email? I’ve got a handy cheat sheet just for you. Download the FREE PDF here.