List hygiene and unsubscribes

A clean email list outperforms a big dirty one. The math is brutal: sending to 10,000 dead addresses doesn't just waste $40 in send fees — it can drop your reputation low enough that the next campaign to your good addresses lands in spam too.

How unsubscribes work

  1. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link in the footer (auto-injected, legally required)

  2. Recipient clicks the link → lands on a confirmation page

  3. Confirms unsubscribe → the contact's DND-Email flag is set to true

  4. Future marketing campaigns automatically skip this contact

  5. One-to-one transactional emails (receipts, appointment confirmations) still send — those aren't covered by unsubscribe

Honoring unsubscribes — legal requirements

  1. CAN-SPAM (US): must process unsubscribe within 10 business days

  2. CASL (Canada): must process within 10 business days

  3. GDPR (EU): must process "without undue delay" — typically interpreted as immediately

  4. Gmail/Yahoo (Feb 2024): must process within 2 days

  5. Intellivizz CRM processes unsubscribes immediately, by default

WARNING — Don't try to game unsubscribes

Hiding the unsubscribe link, requiring a login to unsubscribe, or making it multi-step deliberately violates anti-spam laws and Gmail/Yahoo rules. Every shortcut creates legal liability and worsens deliverability — it's the worst trade-off available. Make unsubscribes one click.

Bounce handling

  1. Soft bounce: temporary issue (mailbox full, server down). Intellivizz CRM retries automatically. After 5 soft bounces, treats it as hard.

  2. Hard bounce: permanent issue (address doesn't exist). Address is auto-flagged "undeliverable" and excluded from future sends.

Monthly hygiene routine

  1. Run email verification on all contacts added or updated in the last 30 days

  2. Build a smart list of contacts with 0 opens in last 90 days ("dormant")

  3. Send a single re-engagement email asking if they want to stay on the list

  4. Auto-tag non-responders as "dormant-confirmed" and remove from default sends

  5. After 6 months in dormant-confirmed, fully unsubscribe them

Monitoring tools

  1. Google Postmaster Tools: shows your domain's reputation at Gmail (free)

  2. Microsoft SNDS: shows reputation at Outlook/Hotmail (free)

  3. MXToolbox: blacklist monitoring — alerts you if your sending IP/domain ends up on a major blocklist

  4. Set up these tools at launch — they're early-warning systems for deliverability issues

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