Keeping the list clean¶
A subscriber list ages. Addresses die, mailboxes overflow, people lose interest — and every dead address costs deliverability for everyone else too.
Set aside half an hour for this twice a year.
Why this matters more than it sounds¶
The big providers' mail servers decide from your behaviour whether your mail goes to the inbox or to spam. What counts against you:
| Deliveries that fail | Sending to dead addresses makes you look like somebody who bought addresses |
| Mail that is never opened | A provider seeing that its users never touch your mail eventually sorts it out |
| Spam complaints | The heaviest weight |
A smaller, living list delivers better than a large, dead one. That is not cosmetics but the difference between the inbox and the spam folder.
1. Process the bounces¶
Only in the Pro and Enterprise editions
Switch on and configure Newsletter → Configuration → Modules → Bounce processing — see Bounce processing.
Recommended settings:
| Delete from the mailbox | Every bounce mail that was matched to a subscriber |
| Matched subscribers | Set to inactive |
| Process daily | On |
Not „Delete immediately"
A single bounce does not mean the address is dead — a full mailbox is a bounce too. Inactive takes the address off the list and keeps the record.
Read the texts occasionally. In Newsletter → Bounce, under Show, is the plain text of the bounce — „Mailbox full", „User unknown", „Message rejected as spam".
If reports of spam classification pile up, that is a problem with your sender domain and not with the addresses. Then work through The newsletter does not arrive, level 4.
Without the module¶
Look into the mailbox the bounces go to by hand and set the affected addresses to Inactive in the subscriber list. With two hundred subscribers that is feasible, with five thousand it is not.
2. Collect the unassigned¶
Newsletter → Subscribers → Unassigned
Subscribers who are in no group. They signed up and never receive a newsletter — and nobody notices.
The way back:
- Select all.
- Bulk action Add to group.
- And fix the cause: set the Group assignment after subscribing under Form configuration. Otherwise the list fills up again.
This is the point with the biggest return
In our own installation, 38 out of 44 subscribers were once affected by this. Look here first.
3. The eternal waiters¶
Newsletter → Subscribers, status filter Waiting for confirmation, sorted by date.
| Age | What to do |
|---|---|
| Days to weeks | Nothing. Some people click late |
| Months | Send opt-in mail again once, through the bulk action |
| Over a year | Delete |
If there are a great many, the confirmation mail is not arriving
More than half on waiting is not your visitors' behaviour but a delivery problem. See Getting more subscribers, section 3.
4. The dead weight¶
Only in the Pro and Enterprise editions
Subscribers who have opened nothing for years. The Statistics module knows — but only if open tracking is switched on and has been running for a long time.
There is no filter for it in the subscriber list. What does work:
- Newsletter → Delivery log, open one recipient — it shows per newsletter when it was last read.
- Or take the CSV export of the statistics of an older issue and compare it with the current one.
Be careful about deleting
An open that was not counted does not mean nobody read it — it means the mail program blocks images. And many do.
Before deleting somebody, send them an issue asking whether they want to stay, with a clear link. Whoever clicks, stays.
5. Do not delete the unsubscribed¶
Out of the box, somebody who unsubscribes is set to Inactive, not deleted (Form configuration, After unsubscribing).
Leave it that way. A deleted entry can accidentally reappear with the next import; an inactive one is the proof that somebody no longer wants to be contacted.
Inactive subscribers receive no newsletter. They cost nothing but a row in the database.
6. Really deleting an address on request¶
If somebody demands erasure of their data, Inactive is not enough.
Use WordPress's Tools → Erase Personal Data. Both routes delete completely, but this one documents the process with a confirmation by the person concerned.
See Data protection.
A rhythm that works¶
| When | What |
|---|---|
| After every issue | A quick look at the bounces |
| Monthly | Check Unassigned |
| Twice a year | Clean up the eternal waiters, look at the open rate over time |
| Before a big campaign | All of the above, and beforehand |
What you should not do¶
| Why | |
|---|---|
| Set all inactive subscribers back to active | Those are people who unsubscribed or whose address is dead. Neither gets better that way |
| Write to an old list again without warning | After a two-year break nobody remembers. That produces spam complaints. See Bringing subscribers along, section „Prepare the first issue" |
| Ignore bounces because the list is growing anyway | It is growing its way into undeliverability |