Not all brands can afford to respond in the same way to these three inactive groups. Some will have a much higher tolerance for deliverability risk while others will have much lower tolerances. Ask yourself: Does your organization have strict authorization practices? Are all or most of your email addresses confirmed through a double opt-in process or validation tool? What percentage of your active mailing list engaged in the last month? 3 months? 6 months? Does your brand have good visibility on your deliverability? If there was a problem, how quickly would you realize it?
Are you able to match customer activity with subscriber activity? Would you know how to solve a deliverability problem if you had one? Do you work with or have access to a deliverability specialist? Have you had deliverability issues in the past? How have these incidents harmed your business? Depending on how you answer these questions, your Image Masking Service appetite for deliverability risk will be different. For example, if you have recently experienced painful deliverability issues, you can start processing your stale inactive customers sooner than your current inactive customers to avoid burning yourself out again as inbox providers will be watching you more closely. after you have already reported your brand once. And if your list has very low engagement, then you'll need to be more aggressive in combating inactivity. Whereas if you have high engagement and deliverability, and have the resources to resolve issues,
you can start dealing with stale inactive customers at 13 months and current inactive customers at 37 months. Don't have enough of a single view of the customer to know which inactive ones are current customers? Next, you need to have the same threshold for current inactive customers as for your lapsed inactive customers, because you won't be able to distinguish between the two groups. Keep inactive emails under control There is no “one size fits all” answer for how to handle inactives. Each brand must determine its own risk tolerance. Then, set up an ongoing process for how and when to deal with each of the three types of inactive subscribers to maximize success and control risk. Originally published March 17, 2016, by Chad S. White. Last updated July 14, 2021.