Is Sunsetting Your Email Subscribers Killing Your Email Program?

I started thinking about this over-sunsetting while working with one of my clients. They are probably one of the strongest performing senders I’ve ever met. BUT they are struggling with list retention and growth. It kills me to see well-intentioned senders struggle with their business when they are doing all the things right.

Even after accounting for roughly 30% list churn that is experienced yearly by most senders, they remained stagnant. They have a very loyal base. But they also have a strict sunsetting policy. It’s worthwhile noting that their sunsetting policy isn’t a permanent one where users are unsubscribed. I would say it’s more of a suppression policy, but if you are thinking about sunsetting or suppression, you’re still working to remove recipients. In both cases, strategy should be involved to make sure you aren’t going overboard, but also aren’t skimping on areas that need more attention.

Again, this sender is one of the strongest ones I’ve worked with. I’m sure it is in part due to their strict sunsetting policy. But because it’s so strict, it has became a hindrance to their program.

Why do we sunset?

We should first start by talking about why they have that policy in place. It was a knee-jerk reaction to panic caused by a block listing at a US-based ISP (which was a very small percentage of their list). I wasn’t working with the client then, but if I had, I would have likely just remediated this particular ISP and sent them on their merry way. But as a sender, seeing a block is terrifying. You aren’t sure what caused it or if other issues are brewing that will bring the program down.

Googling for “WHAT DO I DO?” probably brings up great advice, but that advice on how to fix deliverability is generic and not customized for their situation. Doesn’t mean it was bad advice, but probably not the best fit.

Sunsetting has its purpose. It’s usually used in conjunction with analysis that can show a group of unengaged users are more detrimental than beneficial to mail. If users aren’t engaging or complaining, their signals could indicate lack of interest. When mailbox providers test this, they start pushing mail to the spam folder. If users don’t pull it back out, it’s a signal the mail should remain there. Which then leads more mail to the spam folder and so on. It’s a sound strategy that has fixed many issues. But it can be over implemented without careful planning and analysis along the way. For my soon-to-be client, despite whether this was the right solution or not, it was all they had found, it was better to take the cautious route, follow what was out there, and suppress.

Recouping lost relationships

As we started working together, it was clear they did need to clean up a few things, but that their targeting of 90-day engagement with a drop after 180 days was too tight. We’ve slowly been opening up their list aiming for a year of engagement for most of the streams with a few at a more limited engagement. The slow approach helped us manage those that really needed/wanted to stay off.

The results have been very positive. Performance and reputation remain in good standing. Their unsubscribes and complaints have retained roughly the same percentage or count they've always had. Open and click rates (yes they can be flawed) were expected to drop a couple percentage points, but they surprisingly remained the same.

So far what we are seeing is that the suppression in place was too stringent and the list stagnation was in part due to their own decisions. By the time we finished, we increased the list size by roughly 42%. We have more work to do and there are other areas they need to focus on to improve growth, but that falls to other teams. However, it is rewarding for both myself and them to be able to see growth that is welcomed and restoring relationships that were ended too soon.

Sunset with Strategy Not with Fear 

Now the deliverability nerd in me is cautiously screaming at me internally because the goal of this post is not to advocate never sunsetting or to undo the work a suppression or sunsetting program accomplished, but to call out that there are different solutions for different problems, industries, and clients. What works for one may work for all, but without careful thought and analysis, whatever you choose to do or not do may also bring some unintended consequences.

Before you start a sunsetting policy, ask yourself why you are doing it? If it’s just because there is advice out there to do so, that may not be a good enough reason without more data points. But if you are finding a lacking performance and inability to improve reputation for the long term, that is a justifiable reason.

I recommend also asking yourself, what sunsetting means to you? Are you unsubscribing or temporarily suppressing? What are your short-term and long-term goals? Will these customers have future value to you and will you have value to them or is this more a one-sided benefit for you?

Understanding what your customers want from your messaging will be the key to knowing when a customer has no more value to you and you have no more value to them. The latter is really when you decide to remove them. Some businesses will find after testing that 90 days is the sweet spot. Some might be 14 months. I even have a client that has no suppressions. That one hurts my insides a bit, but the success there comes from them using very targeted content for specific audiences, making sure (as best they can) that the message is relevant.

And that is a key takeaway. Relevance gives you the opportunity to nourish a lasting relationship even when there isn’t a lot of back and forth or when there are big gaps between when they indicate “interest” through an open or website visit. And if you do say goodbye to a customer permanently, so long as you leave the door open to come back, they may still find you valuable in the future, when they are ready. At that point, the relationship will be even more valuable to you both as you’ve had a relationship, respected it, and are welcoming starting it back up.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash