Marketing & Communications

October 29, 2025 · Last updated on March 14, 2026

Recipe: Remove Unengaged Customers from Your Emails

# Emails

# Marketing

# Recipes for success

Makes: An autotag to identify and remove unengaged customers

Email deliverability depends on engagement. Sending to inactive addresses can hurt your sender reputation, trigger spam filters, and lower open rates.

This recipe helps you find unengaged contacts who haven’t opened or clicked your emails or made a purchase in a while. Once identified, you can exclude them from future mailings. It’s a quick way to improve list health and boost engagement with your most responsive customers.

What you need

Access to Customer Lists in Spektrix

Your linked Email Contact Preference (Dotdigital)

Ability to create and manage Autotags and Global Segments

Time required

Prep: 30 minutes Cook: 10 minutes

What will this help me achieve?

Identify inactive email contacts

Improve your email deliverability and engagement rates

Keep your data clean and useful for reporting and segmentation

Concepts we’ll be using

Customer Lists: Tools for identifying audiences based on behavior or activity

Contact Preferences: Used to link Spektrix data to Dotdigital for email permissions

Autotags: Automatically applied labels that keep your segments up to date

Global Segments: Reusable audience filters for consistent targeting across lists

Prep

Create a Customer List using your email contact preference in the pre-filter.

In the main filter, add:

A Marketing Segment for customers who haven’t clicked a link in any email within the last 2 years (730 days)

A Purchasing Segment for customers who haven’t made a purchase in the last 2 years (730 days)

Update the count to see how many customers fit your criteria

In the Output, include these metrics:

Email Address

Date Created

Never Booked

Booked Once

Weeks Since Last Order

Weeks Since Last Visit

Weeks Till Next Visit

Export the list and analyze it to confirm your criteria accurately identify unengaged customers. Refine if needed

Activate

Create a new Autotag using your refined criteria

The tag will update automatically. If a customer makes a new purchase or re-engages, they will be removed

Create a Global Segment using this Autotag

When building future customer lists, add the Global Segment and check “Not” to exclude unengaged customers

Try This Twist

Before removing inactive contacts permanently, set up a Mailing List Re-engagement Program in Dotdigital. Send a targeted message inviting them to stay subscribed, update preferences, or rebook. Use your synced tag group to track responses.

More to explore

↗️ How to Link Contact Preferences to Dotdigital

In this article, we’ll give an overview of how to link one or more Contact Preferences to Dotdigital. We’ll also cover how unsubscribes are managed and how your Customers can manage their own Contact Preferences online.

↗️ Improving Retention Program Template

The Improving Retention Program Template lets you automate a number of emails aimed at getting first time visitors to return.

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