Email Scrubbing

What is Email Scrubbing?

Email scrubbing means regularly reviewing your contact list and removing addresses that are invalid, inactive, or unengaged. Whether you’re running cold outreach or nurturing inbound subscribers, it’s an essential step to ensure your emails reach people who actually want to hear from you.

For outbound campaigns, this helps prevent high bounce rates and protects your sender reputation. On the inbound side, it improves engagement rates and list quality. Either way, email scrubbing supports better deliverability and a healthier overall email strategy.

Why Email Scrubbing Matters in B2B Sales

Email outreach is a vital piece of the B2B sales process—whether you’re reaching out to cold leads or nurturing prospects who opted in through your content. But none of that matters if your emails never make it to the inbox.

Unmaintained lists can tank your sender score. If enough emails bounce or go unopened, providers may route your messages to spam or block them entirely. Regularly scrubbing your lists—across both inbound and outbound campaigns—helps keep deliverability high and engagement strong.

How Email Scrubbing Works

The process can vary depending on your tools and workflow, but it typically looks like this:

• Verify emails before sending: Use a verification tool to catch typos, expired domains, or fake addresses.
• Track engagement levels: Identify who’s opening, clicking, or replying—and who’s not.
• Segment your list: Divide your audience into active, dormant, and invalid contacts.
• Send re-engagement emails: Before removing someone, give them a final chance to confirm interest.
• Clean regularly: Remove contacts that remain inactive or fail verification.

Whether you’re planning a drip campaign or launching a cold email sequence, scrubbing should be a built-in part of your process.

Best Practices for Email Scrubbing

To keep your email list in good shape—regardless of the campaign type—use the following best practices:

• Schedule routine scrubbing: For inbound, clean lists at least quarterly, if not monthly. For outbound, your list should be clean each time you load it into a new campaign. 
• Use automation where possible: Let your platform automatically flag or remove bounced and unresponsive addresses.
• Establish rules for inactivity: Decide how long you’ll wait before considering someone unengaged (e.g., no opens in 60–90 days).
• Respect ongoing conversations: Avoid deleting contacts who are part of an active sales thread.
• Re-verify older lists: If you’re relaunching an old list, verify it again before sending.

These practices help protect your sender reputation and maximize results across your marketing and sales emails.

Common Challenges with Email Scrubbing

Keeping your list clean is important, but not always easy. Here are a few challenges companies often face:

• Hesitation to remove contacts: Teams may worry about cutting potential opportunities.
• Disjointed systems: Inconsistent data between platforms can slow down scrubbing efforts.
• Lack of visibility: Without tracking opens, bounces, or replies, it’s hard to know who should be removed.
• No clear owner: When no one team owns list hygiene, it often falls through the cracks.

Solving these issues takes clear policies, shared accountability, and automation where possible.

FAQs: Email Scrubbing

Additional Resources

• Learn more about cold email best practices cold email best practices
• Explore our Outbound Email Services Outbound Email Services