Keeping your contact list healthy

Almost every deliverability problem is a list problem wearing a disguise. Four habits prevent most of them.

1. Collect addresses you can defend

The question that matters for any contact is could I say where this came from and that they agreed? If not, they are a complaint waiting to happen.

Never buy a list. It is the single most reliable way to damage a sending domain, the bounces alone will stop campaigns, and no careful sending afterwards repairs it.

2. Send regularly enough to be remembered

Frequency matters more than volume. People who hear from you monthly recognise you; people who hear from you twice a year do not, and unfamiliar mail is what gets reported as spam.

3. Let the automatic hygiene work

Invalid addresses, bounces, complaints and unsubscribes are all excluded from sending without you doing anything. Do not delete them by hand — deleting loses the record of why, and your next import happily adds them back. See Invalid addresses, bounces and unsubscribes.

4. Watch dormant contacts

The quiet risk. People who never open anything drag down the engagement signals providers judge you on, and are the likeliest to complain when they finally notice you.

Either re-engage them deliberately or stop sending to them — see Re-engaging dormant contacts.

Smaller is usually better

A list of 2,000 people who want your email out-performs 20,000 who do not, on every measure that matters: opens, clicks, revenue, and whether the next campaign reaches the inbox at all.

Growth is worth having. Growth at the cost of consent is not.

Next: open Contacts, filter by Source, and check you could explain where each group came from.