---
title: List hygiene and cleaning
description: A healthy contact list = better deliverability, better engagement, and lower costs. This article covers what to watch for and what to do about it.
---

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1. [rasa.io Knowledge Base](https://help.rasa.io/?hsLang=en)
2. [Contacts & Subscribers](https://help.rasa.io/contacts-subscribers?hsLang=en)

# List hygiene and cleaning

## A healthy contact list = better deliverability, better engagement, and lower costs. This article covers what to watch for and what to do about it.

A healthy contact list = better deliverability, better engagement, and lower costs. This article covers what to watch for and what to do about it.

### Why list hygiene matters

When you email people who don't open, don't click, mark you as spam, or have invalid addresses:

- **Deliverability suffers** — inbox providers notice low engagement and route your future emails to spam
- **Costs go up** — you're paying for contacts who don't read your emails
- **Your sender reputation drops** — affects every email you send to everyone

A smaller, engaged list outperforms a larger, disengaged one — every time.

### Categories of "unhealthy" contacts

**Bounced emails:**

- **Hard bounces** — the email address is permanently invalid (mistyped, deleted account, domain doesn't exist). rasa.io automatically suppresses these.
- **Soft bounces** — temporary issues (full inbox, server down). rasa.io retries these.

**Unsubscribed contacts:**

- Clicked the unsubscribe link
- Marked you as spam (auto-unsubscribes them)
- Used a list-unsubscribe header

These are already removed from sends automatically.

**Inactive subscribers:**

- Haven't opened or clicked in 3+, 6+, or 12+ months
- Still receiving emails but never engaging
- These are the trickiest because they're "technically" valid but hurt your reputation

**Role-based emails:**

- `info@`, `support@`, `admin@`, `sales@`, etc.
- Often unmanned or shared inboxes, lower engagement
- Many spam filters flag senders who email these frequently

### How rasa.io helps

rasa.io handles a lot automatically:

- **Hard bounces** are suppressed after the first failure
- **Unsubscribes** are honored immediately and globally
- **Spam complaints** trigger automatic unsubscribe
- **Suspect Click** filtering helps you understand which "engagement" is actually bot traffic from corporate scanners

For more on bot vs human engagement, see Suspect clicks.

### What to do about inactive subscribers

Periodically (quarterly is a good cadence), review your inactive subscribers and decide:

**Option 1: Re-engagement campaign**

Send a "we miss you" email asking them to confirm they still want to receive your newsletter. Anyone who clicks stays. Anyone who doesn't, you remove.

**Option 2: Direct removal**

Just remove subscribers who haven't engaged in 12+ months. Faster, but you lose contacts who might have re-engaged later.

**Option 3: Reduce frequency**

For inactive subscribers, send less often (e.g., once a month instead of weekly). Lower engagement still helps, but the cost to deliverability is lower.

### How to identify inactive subscribers

In **Analytics**, look at:

- **Active Subscribers** report — see who's been opening and clicking
- **Daily Stats** — see issue-by-issue performance
- Individual contacts in **Contacts → All Contacts** show recent activity dates

Click any contact to see their last open and last click dates.

### When to do a full list audit

Do a full hygiene pass:

- After importing a new large list
- Quarterly as a regular maintenance practice
- After a major change in your sending strategy (e.g., switching newsletter focus)
- If you see deliverability dropping (open rates falling, more spam complaints)

### Quick checklist

- ☐ Review and remove role-based emails you don't actually want to email
- ☐ Look for and remove obvious typos in email addresses (e.g., `gmail.con`)
- ☐ Identify subscribers who haven't engaged in 6+ months
- ☐ Run a re-engagement campaign or remove them
- ☐ Check spam complaint rates in Analytics
- ☐ Confirm your unsubscribe and preference center pages are working

### Best practices going forward

- **Validate emails at sign-up** — many sign-up form tools (including rasa.io's) check for obviously invalid emails
- **Use double opt-in** for new subscribers (sends a confirmation email before activating the subscription)
- **Set expectations upfront** — tell new subscribers what they'll receive and how often
- **Make unsubscribing easy** — don't bury the link or use dark patterns; clean unsubscribes are healthier than spam complaints

### What's next

- Subscribers vs contacts — understanding your audience numbers
- Suspect clicks — how to read engagement data accurately
- Subscriber permission and consent — staying compliant

- [Getting Started](https://help.rasa.io/getting-started?hsLang=en)
- [Newsletters](https://help.rasa.io/newsletters?hsLang=en)
- [Sequences & Blasts](https://help.rasa.io/sequences-blasts?hsLang=en)
- [Contacts & Subscribers](https://help.rasa.io/contacts-subscribers?hsLang=en)
- [Analytics & Reporting](https://help.rasa.io/analytics-reporting?hsLang=en)
- [Deliverability & Compliance](https://help.rasa.io/deliverability-compliance?hsLang=en)
- [Account & Billing](https://help.rasa.io/account-billing?hsLang=en)
- [Troubleshooting](https://help.rasa.io/troubleshooting?hsLang=en)
- [Security & Privacy](https://help.rasa.io/security-privacy?hsLang=en)

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