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List Optimization

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List Optimization (also called list cleanup) keeps your subscriber list healthy by identifying people who haven’t opened your newsletter in over 90 days, sending them a re-engagement email, and — based on their response — keeping them active or marking them inactive. The result: better open and click rates, fewer bounces, and a stronger sender reputation.

How it works

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When List Optimization is enabled, the process runs daily:

  1. After 90 days of inactivity, a re-engagement email is automatically sent and the subscriber’s status changes to Pending re-engagement confirmation.
  2. The email asks them to confirm their subscription. If they confirm, they move back to Subscribed.
  3. If they don’t confirm within 72 hours, their status becomes Disengaged.

Disengaged subscribers are suppressed from future sends and added to your Inactive Audience — you keep the contact in your database, but they won’t receive newsletters unless reactivated.

How to enable it

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List Optimization can be enabled at two levels:

  • Organization level — applies to all channels; channel-level settings are disabled while it’s on. Find it in organization Settings, under Newsletters.
  • Channel level — applies to a single channel when organization-level optimization isn’t enabled. Find it in channel Settings, under Sending emails.

Toggle List Optimization on, and the system begins processing inactive subscribers daily. If you don’t see the setting, ask your organization administrator.

On company-level audience sending

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On company-level audience sending, the toggle above is replaced by Automatically disengage ghost subscribers, on the Settings tab of your Contacts page under List hygiene. It is off until you turn it on. When it’s on, a reader who was sent each of a newsletter’s last 10 issues, opened or clicked none of them, and has been subscribed to it for more than 30 days is marked Disengaged on that newsletter, which stops it from sending to them.

Readers who come back are resubscribed automatically

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On company-level audience sending, whether or not that setting is on, if a disengaged reader opens or clicks one of a newsletter’s issues again, Letterhead moves them back to Subscribed on that newsletter, usually within about an hour, and they start receiving it again with no action from you. This applies to readers marked Disengaged or Pending re-engagement confirmation.

It never resubscribes anyone who unsubscribed, opted out of everything you send, whose address bounced, or who marked your newsletter as spam. Opens that a mail app loads automatically for privacy, such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection, don’t count: the reader has to open the email themselves or click a link in it.

Each time this happens, it’s recorded once in your company’s activity log, with how many readers came back on which newsletter. And because each returning reader’s status changes to Subscribed, any automation that starts on a subscriber status change to Subscribed runs for them too.

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