Reading your List Health page

List Health is a tab on your company Audience page. For every newsletter you send, it shows how its readers are engaging and whether its mail is arriving, and it leads with anything that needs your attention. This guide walks through each part of the page and what to do with what you see.

List Health weighs engagement, not list size. A list that shrinks because you cleaned out readers who never opened is good news, and the page says so.

The summary banner

The banner opens with any newsletters whose mail isn’t getting through, in plain words:

• Emails for Riverside Weekly are being blocked (red) means mailbox providers turned away most of that newsletter’s mail in the last 30 days.
• Emails for City Weekend aren’t getting through (amber) means some of its mail is being turned away. Usually it’s one provider, often Gmail, while the rest deliver.

Up to three newsletters are named. Past that, the banner counts them. A green line follows when newsletters are more engaged than they were a month ago.

Under the notices, the banner says how many unique contacts you’re reaching across how many newsletters and groups. A unique contact is a person, counted once within each group however many of that group’s newsletters they’re on. It then sorts every newsletter into one of four groups, for example 1 needs your attention soon, 13 have concerning signals, and 70 look great. Newsletters still learning how their readers engage are counted as still settling in.

The banner also says when the numbers were last refreshed. List Health updates every hour. Hover over the time to see the exact date and time.

Newsletter statuses

Each newsletter shows one status, with a short summary line under it. The page shows the first status in this list that applies, so a problem is always named before good news:

Status	When it shows	Summary line, for example
Blocked	Mailbox providers turned away 3% or more of this newsletter’s mail over the last 30 days. It reads red when most of its mail isn’t arriving (half or more turned away), and amber when only part of it is.	Almost half of emails blocked
New	There’s no list from 30 days ago worth comparing against, as when a newsletter is new or its list was imported in the last month.	None
Learning	The newsletter has sent fewer than 10 issues through Letterhead, and no engagement history was brought from another platform.	4 of 10 sends
Ghosting	Readers who haven’t opened any of the last 10 issues grew by 5 points or more as a share of the list, and by at least 3 points more than across your other newsletters, on two readings a week apart.	15% of readers stopped opening
Cooling	Engaged readers fell by 5 points or more as a share of the list, by at least 3 points more than across your other newsletters, on two readings a week apart.	31% of readers engaged, down 7
Recovered	Mail was being turned away in the previous 30 days and isn’t now.	Delivering again
Best month	This newsletter’s open rate over the last 30 days is its highest in the last six 30-day periods. It needs at least three earlier periods with enough sends to compare, so a younger newsletter’s line can name fewer months.	Best open rate in 6 months
Refined	The list is at least 5% smaller and its engaged share rose by a point or more.	Smaller list, 6 points more engaged
Engaging	Engaged readers rose by 3 points or more as a share of the list, or readers who stopped opening fell by 3 points or more.	44% of readers engaged, up 6
Milestone	Engaged readers passed 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, or 100,000.	10,000 engaged readers
Welcoming	New readers who are already opening make up 5% or more of the list.	1,204 new readers opening
Steady	Nothing above applies. A steady list is a healthy one.	None

Engaged readers means Loyalists plus New & Engaged readers (see below). Ghosting and Cooling compare against your other newsletters and need two readings in a row on purpose. Readers on holiday, or a season that quietens every list at once, shouldn’t make one newsletter read as a problem.

Subscribers and net growth

The Subscribers column counts active subscriptions to each newsletter. A reader on three newsletters appears in all three rows, so the rows in a group add up to more than the group’s unique contacts in the banner.

Net Growth is the change in subscribers over the last 30 days: new signups minus unsubscribes, bounces, and cleaned addresses. When there’s no list from 30 days ago worth comparing against, it shows a dash instead of a number, so a newly imported list doesn’t read as a month of growth. Readers you added by importing a list don’t count as new signups.

Engagement categories

Each subscription falls into exactly one category based on how that reader engages with that newsletter. Opening an issue or clicking a link in it both count as engaging. The categories count issues, not days, so a daily newsletter’s reader moves between them faster than a weekly one’s:

Category	Who’s in it	What to do
Loyalists	Engaged with at least 3 of the last 5 issues	Ask them for referrals, survey them, or offer early access.
New & Engaged	Subscribed in the last 30 days and engaged with at least one of your last 3 issues. Readers you added by importing a list don’t count as new here.	A welcome sequence now sets the tone for whether they stay.
Casual	Engages occasionally, but not enough to be a Loyalist	Stronger subject lines move the needle here.
Fading	Used to engage, but engaged with none of the last 3 issues	Send a re-engagement email, such as a “we miss you” note or a best-of roundup, before they become Ghosts.
Ghosts	Engaged with none of the last 10 issues	Run a re-permission campaign, leave them out of sends, or remove them. A smaller, engaged list delivers better.

For Loyalists, Casual, Fading, and Ghosts, an arrow next to the share shows whether it has risen or fallen compared with 30 days ago, and hovering over it says so. No arrow means no real change. A share that’s already at nothing shows no down arrow.

Still learning

A newsletter that hasn’t sent 10 issues yet shows how many it has sent instead of a category breakdown. The categories look back over your last 10 issues, so until then they’d mostly describe issues that were never sent. If you moved to Letterhead from another platform and brought your readers’ engagement history with you, such as their last open date, List Health uses that history and shows the breakdown straight away.

Reputation

The Reputation column is a 0–100 estimate of each newsletter’s sending reputation from its recent bounce, complaint, unsubscribe, and engagement rates. It needs at least 1,000 sends in a day to score, and below that it shows a dash. An arrow beside the score shows whether it rose or fell compared with 30 days ago, and the column header’s tooltip explains the bands.

The same column appears on Portfolio Health, where the bands are a little stricter:

Page	Green	Yellow	Red
List Health	75 or above	50–74	below 50
Portfolio Health	80 or above	56–79	55 or below

For a newsletter with a weak score, review how bounces are handled, send to your active readers with engagement-based segments, or turn on list cleanup to manage inactive contacts.

Opening a newsletter

Select a newsletter’s row to open its panel. It starts with a notice about the newsletter’s status (a Steady newsletter, and one that sends through another email provider, skip this one), then says how its mail landed at each mailbox provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and the rest) over the last 30 days.

• When a Blocked newsletter’s mail is being turned away by one provider, the notice reads the way the row does and names the provider with its share of the mail sent to it, for example Gmail turned away 43% of the messages sent to Gmail in the last 30 days. A green notice under it shows that the other providers are still delivering. The cause is most likely between you and that provider rather than with your readers.
• When a Blocked newsletter’s mail is being turned away by several providers, the notice gives the share of all its mail that was turned away. The cause is usually what’s being sent or where the list came from.
• For any other status, the panel says mail is being delivered, with the share accepted across every provider. If one provider is still turning some mail away, a short amber line names it instead.

Under the notices, a short table lists the providers that received the most mail, how much was sent to each, and the share each accepted. The rest are grouped on one line, and Show all lists every provider. A provider turning mail away is marked in red. If a newsletter hasn’t sent in the last 30 days there’s nothing to show yet, and if it sends through another email provider, Letterhead can’t see how its mail lands and the panel says so.

Suggestions Penpal can act on

Some notices offer suggestions. Selecting one closes the panel and asks Penpal to help with that newsletter. The suggestions that change contacts ask Penpal to show you what it would change first, such as how many contacts, and to wait for your yes. Every suggestion also asks Penpal to tell you when a step is beyond what it can do.

Notice	Suggestions
One provider blocking mail	Plan a slower restart with that provider · Set aside that provider’s readers who aren’t opening
Several providers blocking mail	Compare recent sends with last month
Ghosting	Create a segment of these readers · Exclude them from sends · Stop sending to them
Cooling	Compare recent sends with last month
Best month	Find what your top issues had in common

Related

• Smart Engagement-Based Segments: send to the same categories you see here.
• Understanding bounces: why mail gets turned away.
• Working in Audience: the rest of the Audience page.