On Monday, July 15, Yahoo will be closing all email accounts that haven’t been logged into in 12 months or longer. Yahoo will then release these addresses for the public to claim.
This change will gives you the opportunity to claim a Yahoo email that you always wanted. However, this could also affect some of the addresses on your own email list. Those subscribers who haven’t been active for 12 months won’t be valid after Monday. This can cause all kinda of problems for you. Here’s what you need to do to protect yourself.
Unsubscribe All Unresponsive Yahoo Addresses
Yahoo email addresses on your list that haven’t opened an email from you in 12 months are very likely to be among those released. Other people who are not on your list are very likely to claim these addresses. If the addresses are still on your list, the new owners will start getting your emails or newsletters.
The new owners won’t expect your emails. They will either unsubscribe or mark you as spam. The latter can negatively affect whether ISPs such as Gmail and Outlook accept your emails. If the released addresses go unclaimed, your emails to those addresses will bounce. This can also impact your deliverability.
How To Clear Old Yahoo Addresses From Your List
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Step 1 – Find The Yahoo Emails
You need to identify what email addresses on your list will be released. You begin by searching for subscribers from Yahoo who haven’t opened an email from you in 12 months, but were added before that point. This way you you don’t unsubscribe recent subscribers who haven’t yet opened an email. Save this search result as a new segment.
Step 2 – Attempt To Reactivate
Instead of immediately unsubscribing these addresses, you can send the segment a win-back email. Chances are, someone who hasn’t opened an email in 12 months won’t open this one either, but you never know. If you do this, you’ll need to take Step 1 again to account for those who open your win-back email, and create a new segment.
Step 3 – Unsubscribe The Dead Yahoo Emails
Stop sending emails to that segment of Yahoo addresses by opening that segment, checking the “all†box and hitting “Unsubscribe.†That’s it, you’re done!
If the new owner of the email address decides to subscribe to your list, they will be able to, and the address will revert from unsubscribed back to subscribed on your list. Remember, you have to get this done before Monday, July 15. Hopefully, whoever owns johnchow@yahoo.com is no longer active, so I can take it. 😛
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