List Hygiene
List Hygiene is a great tool that helps remove contacts who don't open your emails, keeping your entire list clean and healthy.
Cleaning your lists regularly is an easy way to maintain your sender reputation with great deliverability. Plus, it also helps boost engagement! Say goodbye to manually scrubbing out inactive, unengaged contacts. And say hello to a squeaky clean, highly engaged audience!
In this article, we'll cover the two types of hygiene available in Sendlane:
Plus, we'll also share information on your cleaning history and additional resources if you're interested in learning more!
Before Getting Started
Prior to enabling list hygiene, be sure you have a list created in your Sendlane account.
Also, make sure you've had contacts on that list for at least 30 days and you've sent at least one campaign email to those contacts.
Please Note
List hygiene is enabled per list. If a contact is on multiple lists, this tool will only remove them from the specified list.
If you'd like to remove inactive contacts that have been on a list for less than 30 days, the best way to do so is with a segment. You can learn more about that here.
Smart List Hygiene
Smart List Hygiene is a one-time, manual removal of contacts that have not engaged with any emails in a certain number of days. Choose this option if you'd like to remove contacts just once.
- Navigate to Audience → Lists → Click to open the list you'd like to set up List Hygiene on
- From the icons at the top, choose Hygiene
-
Choose how many days contacts should be unengaged before they are removed
Please Note
The minimum removal threshold is 10 days of inactivity and the maximum is 365 days.
- Click Remove Inactive Contacts and smart list hygiene will begin processing right away!
Once the process is complete, those contacts will be removed and you'll receive an email with an export .CSV file that includes all of the details for your records.
Automatic List Hygiene
Automatic List Hygiene automatically runs Smart List Hygiene at regular intervals. Choose this option if you'd like to continuously remove unengaged contacts without any manual work!
- Navigate to Audience → Lists → Click to open the list you'd like to set up List Hygiene on
- From the icons at the top, choose Hygiene
- In the window that pops up, click the tab that says Automatic
- Click the toggle to Enabled
- Choose how many days contacts should be unengaged before they are removed and how often you like list hygiene to run on this list
Please Note
We recommend removing contacts that have been unengaged for 60 days, and running list hygiene every 14 days.
- Click Update Automatic Hygiene and list hygiene will automatically run for you!
Moving forward, every time list hygiene runs, those contacts will be removed and you'll receive an email with an export .CSV file that includes all of the details for your records.
History
The History tab will show you all of the times an individual list was cleaned.
From this menu, you can download a .CSV file of the contacts removed, or restore them back into your list anytime!
Please Note
Be cautious when restoring contacts removed by list hygiene. If these contacts were not engaging with your content previously, it is very unlikely that they will start engaging in the future.
Sending to unengaged contacts will hurt your deliverability and open rates, and may even damage your sender reputation over time.
Additional Resources
- How to Use Automated List Hygiene to Boost your Email Campaign Performance
- To Clean or Not to Clean - The Official Case Study of List Cleaning
- Why List Hygiene is the Key For Increased Email Engagement & Success
- How to Win Back Your Unengaged Email Subscribers (With Examples!)
TL;DR
Smart list hygiene: Audience → Lists → Open your List → Hygiene → Select time frame → Remove inactive contacts
Automatic list hygiene: Audience → Lists → Open your List → Hygiene → Automatic → Select time frames → Update automatic hygiene