Just as a gardener is used to trimming away leaves from their flowers, list attrition is part of the e-mail marketing game. There are lots of people that say, The money is in the list. While this is partially true, the money is actually in the relationship with the list.

When we are talking about an e-mail list, especially if that is the main communication channel, it is critical to regularly find inactive e-mail addresses and attempt to get them engaging again.

This is important for two reasons. First, it obviously helps the bottom line to have an active e-mail list. Second, it helps with inbox placement with the major ISPs. Spam filters are getting more advanced and when lots of e-mails are sent but never opened or clicked (among other things), it can cause a high junk folder placement.

For the context of this recipe, we are targeting people on the general newsletter list who haven't clicked anything in the past 120 days.