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Understanding Email List Decay (And How to Fight It)
What Is Email List Decay?
Email list decay (also called list churn) is the natural process of your email list shrinking over time. People unsubscribe, email addresses become invalid, contacts change jobs, or subscribers simply stop engaging with your content. Research shows that email lists naturally decay at a rate of 20–30% per year, which means if you don't actively grow your list, you'll lose nearly a third of your subscribers annually.
Why Do Email Lists Decay?
There are three main reasons your list shrinks: unsubscribes (people opt out), hard bounces (invalid addresses), and soft bounces (temporary issues or dormant addresses).
How to Reduce List Decay
Send better content, set expectations, segment your list, clean your list regularly, use double opt-in, monitor frequency, and make unsubscribing easy.