Regularly removing or suppressing addresses that hurt your sending: hard bounces, people who complained, and people who have not engaged for a long time.
Example
Every quarter Meera removes addresses that hard-bounced and moves subscribers who have not opened or clicked in 12 months into a separate group that gets one 'still interested?' email.
How you'll hear it
“Do list hygiene before the Diwali send; we don't want to hit dead addresses at our biggest moment.”
Don't confuse it with
- List growth: adding new subscribers; hygiene is removing the ones that cause harm.
- Segmentation: grouping for relevance; hygiene is about sender health.
Related terms
Sources
- Email Deliverability Audit: How to Troubleshoot and Fix Your Email Delivery Issues, Litmus
- About Bounces, Mailchimp (Intuit)