Cleaning

Cleaning and managing your list of subscribers is one of the most important ways to increase deliverability, reduce cost, and dramatically enhance the profitability of your email marketing.

When first growing your list, it's easy to focus on subscriber count milestones. However, the most profitable email marketers are focused on the quality of their list — not the size.

A focused list of engaged subscribers will always outperform a large, unfiltered one.

How Campaign Refinery Handles Cleaning

Campaign Refinery manages list cleaning automatically on the backend, so you don't need to take any manual action to keep your list healthy.

Revalidation runs on a mandatory 90-day cycle. This is the industry gold standard for list health and is enforced platform-wide to protect sender reputation and deliverability for all users.
De-duplication also runs automatically. The system identifies and merges duplicate email addresses on your behalf. During this background process, it safely merges all values (Name, custom fields, tags, etc.) while removing duplicate sequences, ensuring the final merged contact retains its "opt-in" status. This prevents duplicate entries in your database while preserving all valuable subscriber data.

📝 Note: A specific email address will not be cleaned (or charged credits) more than once within a 90-day window, even if the contact is deleted and subsequently re-added to your account.

What Gets Removed During Cleaning

The system automatically identifies and unsubscribes the following contact types. Any contact that is already unsubscribed will not be rechecked.

Dormant Accounts — Email addresses that were once valid but have since been abandoned by their owners.
Spam Traps — Addresses created to catch spammers. Previously legitimate emails that were abandoned can turn into spam traps if not removed in a timely manner.
Invalid Emails — Accounts that do not exist, often inserted by bad actors or freebie seekers.
Typo Domains — Addresses with spelling errors such as "gmil.com" that will hard bounce.
Role Accounts — Addresses like "support@", "admin@", or "sales@" that carry a higher complaint risk since the original subscriber may no longer be the one receiving your emails.
Serial Complainers — Contacts known to consistently mark legitimate email as spam.

📝 Note: Role Accounts and Complainers can be exempted from automatic unsubscription on a case-by-case basis, by request and approval of our Admin.

Cleaning Costs

Cleaning costs a set number of credits per contact. Unsubscribed contacts are not rechecked and will not count toward your credit usage. For current credit pricing, please refer to your account or contact support.

Example: If you have 8,300 subscribed contacts, all 8,300 will be subject to the cleaning fee when their cycle runs.

📝 Note: Because the 90-day revalidation cycle is tied to each individual contact's timeline, these credits are consumed on a rolling basis — not all on a single day.

💡 Tip: If a segment of your audience doesn't generate enough value to justify the cost of a routine 90-day re-clean, the most cost-effective approach is to delete those contacts from your account entirely before their cycle renews.