How To Clean Out Your Email List (+ Why You Should)

I’ve spoken to many entrepreneurs who are so worried about whether or not they should clean out their email list because they think that they need to have a high number of subscribers – kind of similar to how they feel about having a high number of followers on Instagram. But let me put it in this perspective: would you rather have a list of 2,000 subscribers with an average open rate of 10% or have a list of 800 subscribers with an average open rate of 30%?

I think you know the answer.

If you’ve debating on cleaning out your email list, DO IT. I’d much rather have a smaller, more engaged audience (which I always stress to my clients) than a larger, uninterested audience. One reason that’s holding people back from doing this is they want to have a spot on summits, podcasts, etc. that require a certain number of subscribers – but I don’t agree with that requirement. If you need some convincing as to why you should clean out your list, take a look at my reasoning below.

Your open rates will increase.

As I mentioned above, your open rates WILL increase when you clean out your list. When I removed almost 400 people from my list, my average open rates increased from 19% to 30% – that’s an 11% difference! I couldn’t believe how many people had opened only 10% of the emails I sent out or even less than that, so I felt it was time to do a clean out.

There are two reasons why people open so few of your emails: 1) they really liked your freebie but didn’t really care about what you have to say and 2) your emails got lost in their “promotions” tab or spam folder.

You’ll only be reaching people who are interested in you and your business.

Similar to what I just mentioned above, MANY people will opt-in to your list just because they want the freebie you’re offering – not because they love your brand and the knowledge you provide. So, chances are they’ll opt-in, grab the freebie, and then ghost you. That’s not an issue, but you’re kind of wasting your efforts if you’re sending emails to people who really don’t care.

The purpose of your email list is to build solid relationships with other business owners who can learn from you and possibly work with you, so you don’t want to put effort somewhere that isn’t going to pay off.

Your expenses will reduce.

Depending on the email marketing platform you use, the price can be costly each month. Why are you paying for subscribers who aren’t even engaging on your list? That’s like buying a shirt that you’re never going to wear – what’s the point?

Depending on how many subscribers you have, and how many you delete, you could end up saving money on the current email marketing plan you’re on.

You may be wondering how you can clean it out now…

There are probably some programs that can clean it out automatically for you, or maybe even the support team of your email marketing provider can do it – it depends on how many people you’re deleting. The easiest way for me was to remove them myself.

To delete my subscribers, I moved my inactive subscribers onto a new list called “DELETE” and then deleted them that way. It honestly didn’t take me that long and made things super easy for me!

Have you cleaned out your email list before? If not, what’s holding you back from doing it?