Here’s a depressing stat:
Over the course of this year, 1 in 4 of your subscribers are going to stop engaging with your winery’s emails.
Here’s an even more depressing fact:
Most wineries are doing nothing to address email list churn, and keep sending to these unengaged contacts at their own peril.
But we’ve got good news for you! We at Email Mavens have a proven system to re-engage dormant subscribers and keep your list clean, on autopilot. Want to learn it? Keep reading to learn our system for keeping your winery’s email list squeaky clean…
Most wineries start to tune us out when we talk about actually REMOVING subscribers from their email list. So good for you for reading this blog post!
We get it, you’ve worked hard to grow your email list. You’ve clawed and scratched to get that subscriber base over 5K, 10K, or maybe 300. And we’ve been preaching the importance of list growth for as long as we’ve been in business. Now we’re telling you to get RID of subscribers? What gives?
We’ll tell ya what gives. With some sexy… okay, maybe not that sexy, stats.
THE DATA
According to 2024 data from ZeroBounce, the average email list churn rate is around 25.74%, meaning roughly a quarter of an email list becomes inactive or invalid within a year.
A significant portion of this is due to invalid email addresses, with the data suggesting that around 20.94% of emails fall into this category. That email address isn’t even REAL.
ONE IN FOUR of your hard-fought subscribers won’t even see what you’re sending.
And if you continually send to email addresses that won’t engage with your content, it starts to hurt…
…more than your email marketing metrics…
…more than the monthly cost of your email service provider, which is often tied directly to the size of your email list…
It can negatively impact your inbox placement with people who actually DO want to hear from you… AND, in some cases it can get you flagged as a spammer and impact your deliverability!
If you don’t address list churn and regularly clean your email list, your entire email marketing program will suffer.
HOT TIP: Copy and paste this DATA section and email it to winery leadership if they give you any push back about this initiative.
Now that we’ve effectively terrified you with the possible downside of continued sending to email addresses that don’t engage, let’s talk about the solution. Because there IS a solution.
THE SOLUTION
It’s simple, it’s effective, and it will improve your inbox placement and overall email marketing ROI when you install it. We’re about to break it down, step by step.
1. Identify dormant subscribers
For most wineries, this is going to be identifying people added to your marketing list at least a year ago who haven’t opened an email in the past 365 days.
One 2026 caveat: Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates open rates, so a “365 days without an open” filter can miss truly dormant contacts. Where your platform allows it, define dormancy by opens AND clicks or site activity, so genuinely engaged Apple Mail subscribers don’t get swept out by mistake. (Good segmentation makes this filter a one-time build.)
2. Invite them to re-engage, temporarily pause, or opt out
We love doing this with a plain text email. This serves two purposes:
- It can pattern interrupt, because if you typically send image-heavy HTML campaigns, your subscriber’s ISP may have been blocking your emails, but a plain text email can get through.
- It also pattern interrupts for the customer, appearing more personal simply by its format.
That “temporarily pause” option matters more than most wineries realize: a subscriber who wants fewer emails is not a subscriber who wants zero. That’s exactly what email preference management is for, and it saves relationships a re-engagement email alone can’t.
3. Send your email and move anybody who takes no action onto a suppression list
You can archive the contacts in Mailchimp, or add them to your suppression list in Klaviyo. If you’re still sending marketing emails through WineDirect, use ContactType to omit them from your active sending list, and read up on what Commerce7’s acquisition of WineDirect’s SaaS division means for your email marketing, because that platform picture has changed.
4. Automate this process
Once you’ve done an initial list cleanup, you can analyze and optimize based on your success rate with re-engaging through this batch process. Then simply build an automation that’s triggered when a subscriber becomes dormant and includes a step to either tag or unsubscribe the contact after they take no action. (Where this flow fits among your other automations lives in the automation roadmap.)
It’s that simple! But you may be wondering…
How Is This Going to Help Me Sell More Wine?
Well, first of all, you’ll likely re-engage more of the dormant subscribers than you’d expect. Across our client accounts, plain text re-engagement campaigns have generated average open rates over 20%, with click rates in the 13–20% range to confirm interest!
More engaged subscribers = more revenue.
And as we already mentioned, consistently sending to unengaged subscribers can harm your inbox placement even with the people who WANT to hear from you. If you consistently send to a bunch of dormant yahoo.com email addresses, you might wind up with a negative sender score that makes your best wine club members who ALSO have yahoo.com email addresses not see your communications.
TAKE ACTION
Do this (super sexy) work.
- Prioritize a list re-engagement campaign this month.
- Then automate the process so that the rest of your emails henceforth are being sent to a truly engaged audience.
- Set aside time to analyze and optimize your re-engagement campaign too, because Email Mavens like us don’t set it and forget it. wink
- And finally, come back and report on your results. We’d love to get an email from you (Yes, YOU!) with your re-engagement metrics: open rate, clicks to confirm interest, and the increased positive metrics the rest of your email list starts to enjoy when you implement what you learned today! Email Erica at erica@emailmavens.com.
At Email Mavens, we believe every winery can sell more wine online by sending better marketing emails. And as we want your ever-improving marketing emails to actually get to the subscribers who love your wine, be sure and take action on today’s learnings!
Keep pressing send on your next best email.
Winery Email Re-Engagement FAQs
Why should wineries remove subscribers from their email list?
Because roughly a quarter of a list goes inactive or invalid every year, and continuing to send to those addresses hurts inbox placement for the subscribers who DO want your emails, inflates ESP costs, and can eventually flag you as a spammer. A smaller engaged list outperforms a bigger dormant one.
What should a winery re-engagement email say?
Keep it plain text and personal, and give three doors: re-engage (click to confirm interest), pause or reduce frequency, or opt out. Plain text pattern-interrupts both the ISP filters and the subscriber, which is why these campaigns can see open rates over 20%.
How long before a subscriber counts as dormant?
A common starting rule: on the list at least a year with no opens in 365 days. Because Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens, pair that with click and site-activity data where you can, so the filter catches the truly gone and spares the quietly engaged.
