I don’t mind when people unsubscribe from my newsletter. In fact, I welcome it. It means I don’t have to pay anymore for dead weight. They are not my people.
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I’m taking it a step further and going to clean cold subscribers from my email list in ConvertKit. These are people who haven’t clicked or opened an email in 90 days. I’d rather them go then continue to pay for them because frankly, having an email list is expensive.
Ready to clean cold subscribers in ConvertKit? Let’s do this together!
How to Clean Cold Subscribers in ConvertKit?
1. Select your cold subscribers.
ConvertKit segments them out for you! They define a cold subscriber as someone who hasn’t opened or clicked an email in the last 90 days and has been subscribed for at least 30 days.
2. Tag all your cold subscribers. Create a tag in ConvertKit that says “Cold subscribers”. You don’t want to delete them right now for two reasons. One, you want to give them a chance to stay on your list and two, they may be falsely tagged.
3. Create an automation rule. First things first, create a page on your site for people to click if they want to stay. It can just say something simple like “Thanks for staying subscribed”. It doesn’t need to be fancy.
Then, go into Rules and add a link trigger so that when people click that link it removes the Cold Subscriber tag. This way you won’t delete that subscriber.
4. Email your cold subscribers. Send them a break-up email that asks them if they want to stay subscribed. Make sure to use that link you created in the previous step in the email and set up it up as a link trigger so that if they click, they’ll be deleted from the cold subscriber tag.
5. Delete everyone who doesn’t click. I recommend waiting a week to give them all time to see and open the email. Set a calendar reminder in Asana if you need to. Whoever is left on that Cold subscriber tag gets removed.
6. Email ConvertKit and tell them your new subscriber numbers. They won’t automatically adjust your account fees so you have to let them know.
It’s painful to delete cold subscribers because the numbers can be high. The first time I did it, there were over 10K on that tag. The second time, almost 5K. However, why do you want to pay for people who don’t engage? Get rid of them and keep your list healthy. These aren’t your people.
I recommend deleting cold subscribers every 3 months. You could also do it when you are about to hit your next payment tier on your email plan.
How often do you delete cold subscribers?
