How do I tidy my mailing list once a year?
A mailing list is not a trophy. The number of subscribers matters far less than what happens to the email you send them, and a list that quietly fills up with people you never reach works against you. Once a year is about the right rhythm to look at it.
What bernard shows you
Under Community, on the Email campaigns tab, a Quiet contacts section lists the people who have gone a full twelve months with nothing at all: no order, no form filled in, and no campaign that reached their mailbox. It only appears once twenty or more people qualify, because a prompt about three people is noise.
Two things about that list are worth being precise about.
It only ever contains people you are allowed to email. If you imported eight hundred names from a spreadsheet and never got permission for them, they are not here. They were never being emailed, so there is nothing to stop. When do I need someone's permission to email them? explains how somebody joins your audience in the first place.
It is about reach, not reading. Bernard does not record opens or clicks and has no plans to, so it will never tell you who is ignoring you. It tells you who you have not reached, which is a fact it can actually stand behind.
Bernard stops counting at five hundred, so a very large list says "500 or more contacts have been quiet for over a year" rather than a precise figure. Five hundred is also as many as one pass can stop, and there is nothing you would do differently at seven hundred, so it does not spend the time working the exact number out.
Stopping the ones you no longer want to email
Choose Stop emailing these. Bernard shows you a quote first: the exact number of addresses, what will happen to them, and what will not. You say yes once.
If your list changed while you were reading the quote, bernard blocks nothing and shows you the new number instead. That is deliberate. A yes belongs to a number you actually read.
One pass stops at most five hundred addresses. If there are more, the quote says so and you run it again afterwards for the rest.
Nothing is deleted and no email goes out. The addresses join your do-not-email list marked as blocked by you, which is the one reason on that list you can undo yourself. Their orders, their course access and everything they ever told you stay exactly where they are. Who is on my do-not-email list, and why? covers the whole list and what each reason means.
Very large lists are tidied in more than one pass; the quote says so when that applies, and you simply run it again.
Before you press it
There is no rush, and there is a good reason to slow down. If you have not sent anything in a year yourself, the quiet is yours rather than theirs, and blocking people because you did not write to them is the wrong fix. Send something first, see who is still there, and tidy afterwards.
The same goes for a seasonal business. Somebody who books one workshop every eighteen months is not stale, they are seasonal, and the twelve-month line will catch them. Read the list before you act on the number.
What it does for your newsletter
Is my email sending healthy? shows the two numbers that decide how your email is treated: how much of it fails to arrive, and how many people mark it as spam. Both get worse as a list ages, because old addresses get closed and reused, and because people who have forgotten you are the most likely to hit the spam button rather than unsubscribe.
Tidying once a year is the cheapest thing you can do to protect the people who do want to hear from you.
The prompt
“Show me the quiet contacts for [my site] and explain who they are and what happens if I stop emailing them.”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Where do I find this?
- Open Community, then the Email campaigns tab. The Quiet contacts section appears under your do-not-email list, and only when twenty or more people are on it. Below that number there is nothing worth tidying and bernard leaves you alone.
- Who counts as quiet?
- Someone you are allowed to email, who has not ordered anything, not filled in one of your forms, and not had a campaign reach them for over twelve months. People you were never allowed to email are never in this list, because stopping emails you were never sending changes nothing.
- Does this mean they are not reading me?
- No, and bernard will never claim that. Bernard does not record who opens an email or what they click, so it cannot tell you who is reading. What it can tell you is who you have not reached in a year.
- Does it delete anybody?
- No. Nothing is deleted and no email is sent. The addresses go on your do-not-email list marked as blocked by you, so their orders, course access and history all stay exactly where they are.
- Can I change my mind?
- Yes. This is your own block, and your own block is the one kind you can undo yourself. Open the Do not email section, find the address and choose Undo.
- Does bernard do this on its own?
- Never. Bernard shows you the list and the exact number, and nothing happens until you approve it. Asking Bernard in the Workshop is the same: it can read the list for you, but the approval is yours and the one-step block lives on the page. Sending a campaign still needs your own approval as usual.
- Why does it matter at all?
- Mail services judge your sending by what happens to it. A list full of addresses that never do anything slowly lowers how your newsletter is treated, so the people who do want to hear from you are more likely to end up in a spam folder.