Clean up your email list with sunset segments and journeys

Sunset segments and journeys allow you to identify and re-engage subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked on email messages from you. Creating sunset segments and journeys can help you:

• Renew subscriber interest in your emails
• Remove subscribers from your list if they’re no longer interested
• Reduce your email list size
• Improve your deliverability and engagement rates
• Avoid sending unwanted messages to unengaged subscribers

Follow the steps in the sections below to learn how to sunset inactive subscribers:

• Step 1: Define your sunset criteria
• Step 2: Create a sunset segment
• Step 3: Create a sunset journey
• Step 4: Create an unengaged segment

Step 1: Define your sunset criteria

The first step is to define your sunset criteria, which is the period of inactivity after which you consider a subscriber to be unengaged. For example, you may decide that a subscriber is unengaged if they haven’t opened or clicked on any of your email messages in the last 120 days. This criteria may vary depending on your industry, audience, and email frequency.

Attentive recommends considering subscribers unengaged when they:

• Have subscribed to receive emails from you between the last 181 and 365 days
• And have opened an email from you at least once between the last 181 and 365 days
• And have received an email from you more than 10 times over all time
• And have not purchased at least once over all time

You can create a dynamic segment of these subscribers so that you can attempt to re-engage them with a sunset journey and suppress subscribers who don’t re-engage with it.

Step 2. Create a sunset segment

After you’ve defined your sunset criteria, the next step is to create a sunset segment, which is a dynamic segment that includes all the subscribers who meet your sunset criteria from Step 1. For example, you can create a segment called "Sunset 120 days" that includes all the subscribers who haven’t opened your emails or clicked links in your emails in the last 120 days.

Follow these steps to create a sunset segment:

1. Go to Segments.
2. Click + Create segment.
3. Next to Dynamic segment, click Create.
4. Build your first condition.
   • From the condition dropdown, choose A subscriber’s activity.
   • Build the first condition based on your sunset criteria. For example, using the recommended criteria above, your first condition would include subscribers who have subscribed to email between the last 181 and 365 days. See Create a dynamic segment for more information about creating segment conditions.
     
5. (Optional) Click + or + Condition group to build additional conditions based on your sunset criteria. For example, using the recommended criteria above, your next condition would include subscribers who have opened an email from Attentive at least once in the last 180 days. See Create a dynamic segment for more information about creating advanced segmentation rules by nesting conditions with AND/OR logic in condition groups.
   
   
   Note: If you’re adding conditions based on whether subscribers received or opened emails, and Klaviyo data is available, build conditions for both Attentive and Klaviyo.

   Example: If your sunset segment includes subscribers who have opened an email from you at least once between the last 181 and 365 days, build two conditions: one for Attentive and one for Klaviyo, as in the image below. Set the dropdown above your conditions to Any.
   

6. When finished building conditions, click Create. The Save your segment popup window appears.
7. In the popup window, give your segment a memorable Name based on your sunset criteria and enter a brief Description.
   
8. Click Save.

Step 3. Create a sunset journey

The third step is to create a sunset journey, which is a triggered email campaign that aims to re-engage your sunset segment with personalized and relevant messages.

For example, you could create a journey called "Sunset re-engagement - email" that sends a series of emails to your sunset segment with incentives, offers, or reminders to encourage them to open or click on your messages.

Follow these steps to create a sunset journey:

1. Go to Journeys.
2. Click Prebuilt journeys.
3. Click Sunset Journey - Email.
4. In the journey editor, click the Joined a Segment trigger at the beginning of your journey.
   • In the Joined a segment panel, click the current segment name.
   • In the popup window, search for and select your sunset segment, then click Apply selection.
5. In the Joined a Segment panel, click Save.
   
   
   Your journey will now be triggered when subscribers are added to your sunset segment.
6. In the journey editor, click the Add custom attribute step at the end of your journey.
   • In the Add custom attribute panel, click Choose attribute category.
   • Select a custom attribute to use to identify subscribers who went through your sunset journey but still didn’t open your emails or click email links. If one doesn’t exist, click + Create new. See Create custom attributes for more information.
7. In the Add custom attribute panel, click Save.
   
   
   The value you selected will now be added to a custom attribute for subscribers who went through your sunset journey but still didn’t open your emails or click email links.
8. Review and update Send email steps in the journey to match your brand’s voice and style.
9. Click Turn on.

Your sunset journey is now enabled.

Step 4. Create an unengaged email subscribers segment

The last step is to create an unengaged email subscribers segment, which is a dynamic segment that includes all the subscribers who went through your sunset journey but still didn’t open your emails or click email links. These subscribers are identified by the custom attribute that’s added to their subscriber profiles when they go through your sunset journey but still don’t click links in your emails or open them.

Follow these steps to create an unengaged segment:

1. Go to Segments.
2. Click + Create segment.
3. Next to Dynamic segment, click Create.
4. Select A subscriber’s characteristics.
5. Select the custom attribute and corresponding value you used to identify unengaged subscribers in your sunset journey in Step 3. For example, if you have a custom attribute named “Engaged with sunset journey” where the value can be either “Yes” or “No,” the condition would read as follows: “Engaged with sunset journey is No.”
6. When finished, click Create. The Save your segment popup window appears.
7. In the popup window, give your segment a memorable Name (e.g., “Unengaged email subscribers from sunset journey”).
8. Click Save.

Once you’ve created your unengaged segment, you can exclude subscribers in this segment from future campaigns. You can also suppress subscribers in this segment. For more information about suppression, reach out to your Attentive CSM and Email Product Specialist or contact whiteglove@attentive.com.