Shawn Collins has a good post this morning explaining why you need to update your mailing lists before July 15 since Yahoo! is cleaning out inactive email addresses by then:
Clear Old Yahoo Addresses Off Your Email Lists – Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: “So you’ll either be mailing to dead addresses, which can impact your deliverability, or the new owners will start getting your newsletters, and will be upset that you are emailing them.
They will either unsubscribe or mark you as spam. The latter can negatively affect whether ISPs such as Gmail and Outlook accept your emails.”
More specifically, Yahoo! will be deleting any email accounts that have been inactive for 12 months or more. The folks at AWeber also have a good post outlining what you need to do to clean those addresses of your mailing lists:
Updated: Yahoo Releasing Email Addresses Monday, July 15: “You need to identify what email addresses on your list will be released. Search subscribers from Yahoo who haven’t opened an email from you in 12 months – but were added before that point (so you don’t unsubscribe recent subscribers who haven’t yet opened an email). Save them as a segment.”
Go update your mailing lists and make sure you’re not going to be sending email to the wrong people (in case some of those deleted accounts get claimed by new owners). Yahoo! has said they’re taking measures to unsubscribe accounts on the hit list, but there’s no way to make sure they catch everything.
We use MailChimp at Harrelson Agency, so here’s their post on how to clean up as well:
Yahoo Is Recycling Email Addresses | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog: “If you don’t perform regular list maintenance, let me suggest you start. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to segment out any inactive Yahoo addresses.”
