| Hey, Writers often take a perverse relish in killing their characters, but when removing emails from their list they turn squeamish. Gird your loins, pilgrim, for this is the road to the promised land of high open rates, engaged subscribers, superior clickthrus, and the level of direct sales from your newsletter that can trouble the very upper reaches of the charts. But it is not a road without peril and we don't wish to be reckless. It's already hard enough to find readers in this crazy, mixed-up world, let alone those precious souls who are willing to sign up to our mailing list. We need to be as sure as we can be that the people we are removing truly are beyond reach. The stakes are high, the prize is true, and the danger is real, yes, but the cost of inaction is greater again and the route to safety is already mapped out before us. But before we delve into all that, I have updated my list of book promo sites for 2026. The Facebook post is here if you wish to check it out and spread the word. Now, let us step forth. list optimization 101 We are talking about list optimization today, if you hadn't guessed, which is the infinitely superior name I have bestowed on what is more normally referred to as list culling – as if our inactive subscribers were sickly steers rather than living, breathing readers who might have gotten a little busy in their day-to-day. Or list hygiene which just gives me the ick for reasons I can't quite explain… and probably shouldn't explore. List optimization, therefore, describes the process of taking various actions to ensure the continuing health of your mailing list – which I'm sure you know is your most important marketing asset (aside from your books). Your newsletter can and should be the foundation of your entire promotional edifice, the engine which drives a sustainable and lucrative writing career. And like engines, he says, with no actual knowledge of such contraptions, they benefit from periodical maintenance. The kind of thing that isn't overwhelming once you stay on top if it. But where performance can slowly degrade without it, until one day it goes kaput. What you are aiming for is simple: a clean and active list. Most authors have no problem with the first part; we don't normally engage in shady activities like buying tons of random email addresses. We don't usually trick people onto our lists through some internet switcharoo. Those who have subscribed, typically, are there of their own volition. Which makes our lists pretty clean – to begin with at least. And if you are using a reputable email marketing service, they will take care of some of the maintenance for you by doing things like removing subscribers who click Unsubscribe or Spam or anyone who is a hard bounce, for example. If you are not using a reputable email marketing service, then you should rectify that immediately. My two recommendations you can explore are: Those are both affiliate links, but I'm a happy user of both services for several years now – and I can break down some of the differences for you because MailerLite powers my fiction pen names and Kit runs my non-fiction business; both suit different needs. MailerLite is a little cheaper and less complicated and probably the default choice for most authors. Kit is a little more expensive but has a richer feature set, doing things like integrating with course platforms and handling direct sales very well – making it a natural fit for authors who write non-fiction or who have more advanced needs. Both have free plans, MailerLite's is pretty typical for the industry and thus quite limiting in terms of subscriber count before you have to spring for a paid plan. Kit's is very different – allowing a huge subscriber limit while free (up to 10,000) but some unusual restrictions, such as requiring you to use its Recommendations system. Which you will either love or hate, I suspect, after playing with it. You can check out both for yourself and pick which suits your needs best. Whatever service you use – whether it's one of the above or an alternative –they all tend to handle some tricky things in the background you probably aren't aware of, like when the digital handshake with Gmail goes awry, or your rate limit gets exceeded and so on. And the cool thing is you don't need to know what that stuff means because your email marketing service quietly sorts all that in the background and does all sorts of things to try and get as many of your emails into recipient's inboxes as possible. All this helps to keep your list clean over time too. keeping them active The active part of the above equation can be more of a stumbling block, especially if you haven't been engaging in email marketing best practices. These include things like: - Using double opt-in
- Having a welcome sequence
- Writing engaging emails
- Removing disengaged subscribers periodically.
Even if you have been diligent with your list, you still need to do a little list optimization because even the greatest newsletter in the world will accumulate disengaged readers over time, and these will eventually drag down the open rates and impact the deliverability of the healthiest mailing lists – if no action is taken. What I'm saying is, everyone needs to trim their lists every so often, no matter how well you have been running it. And if you have been slipping on any of the above practices then the situation could become critical if you keep postponing action. The cost of inaction is clear: open rates will keep falling and falling, making it more and more difficult for your mailing list to have any impact on your launches or promotions. But if you do take action periodically, it has the opposite effect: increased open rates, improved deliverability, healthier sender reputation, and, most importantly of all, increased clicks through to your book listings, and a genuine boost in sales. the challenge The tricky part is: - Determining which readers are genuinely disengaged.
- Constructing a sequence which will attempt to re-engage them before earmarking them for deletion.
- Wording the email in a way that doesn't ruffle anyone's feathers.
- Leaving the door open for readers to return
- Tagging people so you know if something goes awry.
It sounds like a lot of work but, honestly, it's mostly set up and then it's something you can just turn on and off whenever you wish (and, when you get confident enough, it's even possible to have it constantly running in the background without any further intervention from you). Don't be afraid of this. I ran my mailing list the wrong way for years: I only emailed people when I wanted something. I never removed inactive subscribers. I didn't have any real welcome sequence. And my list suffered. It was maybe eight years ago when I decided on a radical change: I would start deploying all the best practices I had been resisting. I started emailing regularly. I began removing disengaged readers. I deployed double opt-in. I wrote a proper welcome sequence. And my list grew at ten times the rate. Next week I'll break down the exact steps so that you can identify which readers on your list have truly gone dark, show you how to winnow out those who can be brought back into the light, and break down the safest way to trim the rest so you can improve the performance of your list and start growing to the level you deserve. Until then, Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Fleet Foxes with Ragged Wood. | 
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