Why would deleting subscribers make things better?

Why would deleting subscribers make things better?

List cleaning means removing people who never open your emails. It feels backwards, but mailboxes judge you by how interested your readers are.

Why it matters: a newsletter had 12,000 subscribers but 4,000 hadn't opened anything in a year. Those dead addresses were dragging the whole list into spam folders.

Here's the careful approach they used:
— Step 1: sent one "do you still want these?" email to the 4,000 quiet ones
— Step 2: ✅ kept the few who clicked, removed the rest after a week
— Step 3: measured inbox placement before and after

Result: list shrank to 8,300 but open rate jumped from 16% to 31%, and more emails landed in the main inbox.

Tiny homework: find how many subscribers haven't opened in 6 months. Just the number.

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