How to rid yourself of costly email “deadwood”…

Iceland is one of the safest countries on the planet:

Violent crimes are so rare that not only is the police largely unarmed…

…but most people never experience it in their lifetime!

But even though the crime rates are 5-20x lower than the global average…

It still has some bad apples:

There were 8 homicides, about 600 thefts, and 279 sexual offences in 2024.

For a country with nearly 400.000 people?

That’s super low – it’s very peaceful living there overall.

But as I said, there are still rotten apples…

Just like on your newsletter.

There are still invalid, risky or just plain unengaged email addresses inflating your sending costs…

…and dragging down your inbox delivery.

(The latter especially.)

Now usually…

You get rid of them by hiring a list scrubbing/hygiene service – they have special software which detects spamtraps, bots, role accounts, dormant accounts, typo domains, catch-all domains, invalids…

…and scrubs them off your newsletter.

However…

This costs money.

It ain’t a lot, but it’s still moolah.

Well…

There is a way you can do it for FREE.

(To an extent.)

You won’t get rid of the technical deadwood this way…

(i.e, invalid emails, spamtraps, honeypots and any email address behind which a human isn’t behind anymore – or wasn’t behind at all…)

But you will get rid of the behavioural deadwood – people who:

• Don’t care about you or your brand…
• Who only joined for a discount code/welcome gift and then tuned out…
• Who are “ghosts” that never open and/or click your emails…
• Low-trust people who misuse the spam button…
• Or just people who joined a while ago but changed interests or straight-up forgot you existed.

The most brain-dead simple – but NOT easy – way to fling these people off your email list…

Is to just email daily.

Because you become too big a nuisance – seeing you every day in their inbox – for them to keep ignoring you.

So most of them just quietly unsubscribe and leave.

And the ones who stay?

Well…

They’re the high-quality subscriber who WANT to hear from you… who WANT to read your emails… and who – ultimately – may even want to BUY something from you.

(The former category was never gonna buy anything – they were just sitting dormant on your list inflating your sending costs and dragging delivery down.)

Now… this won’t be enough.

You should still get your email list professionally scrubbed every once in a while…

But this is the one thing you can do – on your side – for free.

More:

Every time I take someone on for Email Storyselling…

I always demand – not ask – that a list scrub is done on your newsletter before we do anything else.

Because email marketing is like wine making:

The better the soil, the better the wine.

My Email Storyselling method is worth jack shit…

…if I’m sending the emails to a dead and/or list full of rotten apples.

I have to break it down so I can build it back up greater than before.

(That’s the culture of US Marines – at least in its boot camp.)