The ongoing practice of maintaining a clean, accurate email list — removing invalid addresses, inactive subscribers, and known spam traps — rather than continuing to send to an accumulated, unmaintained list.
Why it matters
Sending consistently to a poorly maintained list — full of invalid or disengaged addresses — damages a sender's deliverability reputation with mailbox providers, which can cause even well-targeted emails to land in spam folders.
In a sentence
"We do quarterly list hygiene, removing anyone who hasn't opened an email in the past year, even though it makes our list smaller."
Related terms
- Often confused with: List segmentation (list hygiene is about removing invalid or inactive contacts to protect deliverability; segmentation is about dividing an otherwise healthy list into targeted groups).