What is meant by 'list hygiene' in email marketing?

• A. Regularly sending to new recipients to grow list
• B. Regularly removing invalid, dormant, or unengaged addresses
• C. Increasing email frequency
• D. Ignoring bounces

Answer: (B)

List hygiene is about keeping your email list clean by regularly removing addresses that are invalid, have not engaged recently, or are unlikely to be delivered to. This is the right focus because delivering to bad or dormant addresses hurts deliverability and your sender reputation. When you keep sending to such addresses, you accumulate bounces and send to people who don’t want your messages, which can trigger spam filters and cause ISPs to view you as a poor sender. Regular cleanup helps you reach people who are actually interested, improves open and click metrics, and lowers costs by not sending to dead ends.

The other ideas miss the point of hygiene. Growing the list adds new recipients, which isn’t about cleaning up problems. Increasing frequency can drive more unengaged behavior and harm deliverability. Ignoring bounces directly undermines hygiene, since bounces are a clear signal about deliverability and list quality.