Effectively managing your newsletter subscribers is crucial for maintaining a clean and engaged email list. When too many subscribers aren’t interacting with your emails, it can negatively affect your newsletter metrics and deliverability.
You can easily remove unengaged subscribers from your list, both automatically and manually. While this article covers manually managing your audience, you can create a re-engagement campaign that proactively removes dormant subscribers.
We'll start with some quick tips and resources to help you get started. Then, we'll walk through the different actions you can take including deleting subscribers in bulk. Finally, we'll answer some frequently asked questions about managing subscribers.
Quick tips to get you started
- Each subscriber has a profile dashboard where you can access key data and manually manage their subscription from your account.
- Subscribers can have 1 of 4 statuses, indicating their level of engagement with your publication. You can view this information in their subscriber profile dashboard.
- It’s best to set up a Subscriber Preference Center to manage and allow your subscribers to customize their preferences.
- Subscriber tags give you the ability to internally organize your subscribers, by tagging them based on certain criteria.
- You can export your subscriber list to a CSV file directly from your beehiiv account.
-
Segments are a powerful tool that you can leverage to help you decide which subscribers to remove from your email list.
- For example, if a reader has unsubscribed or if you want to remove someone from your list, you can easily delete them using a segment. You can also create a segment specifically for readers who have unsubscribed.
Individual subscriber options
- From the left panel Dashboard, go to Audience > Subscribers.
-
Click on a subscriber to access their personal dashboard.
-
In the upper-right corner, click the arrow next to Unsubscribe to view available actions: Unsubscribe, Add to Automations, Reset Password, or Delete.
Unsubscribe
Selecting Unsubscribe from a subscriber profile will manually unsubscribe the subscriber from your audience.
Subscribers that you unsubscribe but do not delete will be marked as Inactive.
A confirmation prompt will appear asking if you’re sure you want to unsubscribe this subscriber. Click Unsubscribe to confirm.
Add to Automation
Selecting Add to Automation from a subscriber profile allows you to enroll the subscriber in any of your automation workflows.
A modal will ask you to Choose Automation(s). Use the dropdown to select one or more workflows. Selected automations will be listed, with an option to remove them by clicking the trashcan icon. Once you've made your selections, click Enroll.
Reset Password
Selecting Reset Password from a subscriber profile will send an email prompting the subscriber to update their password for your publication website. A modal will ask you to confirm this action. Click Send Email to proceed.
Delete
Selecting Delete from a subscriber profile will permanently remove the subscriber from your audience.
You’ll be prompted to confirm this action, with a reminder that all associated data will be permanently lost. To proceed, click Delete.
Deleting a subscriber is permanent and will remove both the subscriber and all their associated data.
How to delete subscribers in bulk via segmentation
To delete subscribers in bulk, you'll first need to create a segment that identifies the group you'd like to remove, then proceed with deleting that segment.
-
Create a segment for the subscribers. Determine the subscribers you wish to delete and create a segment that includes all users matching your criteria.
-
Access the segment’s dashboard. Once the segment is created, locate it in your list of segments and click to open the segment dashboard.
-
Delete the segment. In the segment dashboard, go to the Overview tab. Below the statistics and above the subscriber list, click the down arrow next to Quick Export. From the dropdown, select Delete. Confirming this action will permanently delete all subscribers within the segment.
Since this action is irreversible, it’s highly recommended to back up your subscriber data before proceeding with the deletion.
Frequently asked questions about managing subscribers
-
The subscriber numbers you see in your account dashboard upon logging in and the total number you see in your Subscribers Report are not expected to match because they represent different metrics, one shows the number of your active subscribers and the other showcases a tally of your new subscribers.
Account Dashboard: The Active Subscribers number you see on the Overview tab of your account dashboard represents the total number of active subscribers over the selected timeframe. This number specifically reflects those who are currently receiving your emails because they have confirmed their subscription and are not marked as Inactive.
Subscribers Report: The number of subscribers displayed in the Overview tab of your Subscribers Report represents the total number of New Subscribers within the selected timeframe, which includes a tally of Active, Inactive, Pending, and Validating subscribers. Learn more about subscriber status types here.
-
The first step in identifying disengaged users is to define what 'disengaged' means for your audience. Once you've set your criteria, you can create a segment to identify those subscribers.
Some common examples of disengaged users to include in a segment:
- Open rate is 0% (or less than 5% in some cases)
- Open rate is less than 1/8 of the most recent emails
- Click-through rate is less than 1%