Hey Community,
It’s Wednesday, and before your schedule any emails make sure to clean the list.
Wait! What I mean by it?
Simply go to the subscriber > Undeliveable
Then, select the contacts and delete.
Best regards,
S
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Hey Sushant,
Great tip! You can also clean up your lists by following these steps:
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Consolidating/Merge lists to take advantage of the power of tags for segmenting and automations. NOTE: If you have Campaigns triggered On Subscribe in the list you merge subscribers into, make sure the Campaign is Paused when adding them or change the trigger to Tag Applied temporarily, then back to On Subscribe after they are added. Otherwise, the Campaign(s) will send when the subscribers are added since they will be seen as new subscribers on that list.
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Deactivate lists you are not using
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Removing unengaged subscribers; this can help improve deliverability and engagement with your emails.
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Personally I recommend you dig deeper before deleting. A subscriber can have a temporary delivery failure and still be an active subscriber that has received and opened emails after a failure.
If their status is unsubscribed then sure, delete them (no loss, no gain).
But if they still show as subscribed, then check dates of delivery failures and then look at opens under subscriber activity. If it’s a one-off or a short burst of failures you can delete the list of failures and that subscriber will then drop off the undeliverable list.
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Hey Martin,
Thanks for adding in, that’s a great insight.
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Thanks for weighing in Martin!
You are spot-on. Temporary delivery failures, like soft bounces, can often happen due to issues on the subscriber’s end—like a full inbox or a brief server issue. These subscribers may still engage with your emails once the issue resolves, so it’s always worth checking their activity before making any decisions.
It’s worth clarifying that soft bounces don’t actually show up in the “Undeliverable” section under your subscriber activity. The entries you see there are hard bounces or permanent failures that typically don’t recover.
To account for rare cases where a receiving issue might resolve itself, AWeber doesn’t automatically unsubscribe a contact after just one undeliverable notification. However, hard bounces are usually a strong indicator that the email address is invalid or no longer in use.
If the subscriber has opened emails recently, it may be worth keeping them for now. For those showing zero activity and repeated delivery failures, cleaning your list is likely the best approach.
It’s also a good idea to run a re-engagement campaign for those showing low activity. Sometimes, a simple “We Miss You!” email can reignite their interest and keep them engaged.
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