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I have a confession.

Last week I exported my LinkedIn inbox and counted.

825 conversations where I had spoken, the other person answered, and then nothing from me.
Some from July. Some from last week.

It wasn't rudeness.
I was building the Review My Emails app, and my inbox lost the fight.

When I do reply, it's fast. Usually within about twelve minutes.
The problem was never slow replies. It was the ones I never got to at all.

So I'm going through them now. By hand. One by one.

And reading them back, I noticed something.
A lot of you told me it wasn't for you. Fair.
But you also know people. Founders, clients, the one colleague who keeps asking why the newsletter "just stopped working."

So here's the thing I should have said months ago.

If you know someone whose emails keep landing in spam, send them my way.
I pay 15% for life on anyone you refer.

No quota. No forms to chase. Just an intro.

And if you're one of the 825, I'm getting to you.

"We already validated it."

I hear this more than any other sentence in my job.

And it's usually true. Every address passed.
The domain exists. The mail server answers. The mailbox responds.

Here's what that check never sees.

The person who stopped using that address two years ago, but the account was never shut down.
The person who still reads it, and hits the spam button on everything.
The address sitting on a domain with a bad history.

All of them come back "valid."
None of them are safe to keep mailing.

Valid tells you the address can receive mail.
It doesn't tell you whether you should send to it.

That's the question Review My Emails answers.
Every address gets one verdict: Keep, Monitor or Suppress. With the reason, in plain English.

Sign up and your first 1,000 addresses clean free inside your account.

I tested my own LinkedIn messages this year. Real numbers, my inbox, January to September.

Opener one: "Reaching out to my network today."
Sent 502 times. 7.8% replied.

Opener two named one specific, painful moment. Moving to a new email marketing tool.
Sent 280 times. 36.1% replied.

Same person sending. Same offer behind it.
The only change was whether the reader recognised their own week in the first line.

I keep relearning this.
Nobody answers a category. People answer a situation.

Which is why I want to build content with people who sit next to that situation every day.

Copywriters who watch their best email go nowhere.
Consultants who set up email marketing tools for clients.
Designers, strategists, anyone who serves senders.

Co-write a piece. Swap a teardown. Get listed in our partner directory.
You bring the situations you see. I bring what the list data says about them.

If that's you, comment "collab" and I'll message you.

If you run an agency or consult on your own, this is how I'd like to work with you.

Your client should never hear my name.

That's on purpose.
They trust you, not me. And I'd like to keep it that way.

So here's how it works.

Your client's list needs cleaning before a big send, a migration, or a relaunch.
You send it to us.
It comes back white label. Every address with a verdict, Keep, Monitor or Suppress, and the reason.
It goes to your client under your name.

You keep the relationship.
You earn 15% on every one.
I stay in the engine room, which is exactly where I like to be.

No logo swap to negotiate. No awkward three-way calls.

If you look after other people's email, this is the easiest line you can add to your service list.

I sorted 261 recent LinkedIn replies I had left unanswered.

The biggest group, by far, was the polite no.
100 of them.

"Not really my area."
"We don't do much email."
"No budget this year."
"Sorry, I'm in marketing."

For months I read those as dead ends and moved on.

I had it backwards.

The person who says "not me" is telling you something useful.
They're close enough to email to know it isn't their problem.
Which usually means they know exactly whose problem it is.

The founder friend whose newsletter stopped getting replies.
The client who swears they "already cleaned the list."
The colleague who asks every quarter why sales emails vanish.

So now every polite no gets the same answer from me.

Totally fair. Is there one person in your world whose emails keep landing in spam?
Send them my way. I pay 15% for life on anyone you refer.

That offer stands for you too, reading this.

Start the year with 10,000 contacts.

By December, 7,000 to 8,000 of them are still valid and engaged.
The rest went quiet while you weren't looking.

That's normal. A typical list decays 20% to 30% a year.
B2B moves faster, because work addresses die when people change jobs.

Here's the part that catches people out.

A lot of those lost contacts never bounce.
They just stop opening.

So the list still looks big.
The dashboard still looks fine.
And your emails keep going to people who are no longer there.

That's not your fault. People change jobs, switch providers, lose interest.
But it is your problem, because it drags on your deliverability quietly.

If you haven't cleaned in the last 12 months, there's a fair chance 20% or more of your list isn't worth sending to anymore.

Review My Emails tells you which ones. Keep, Monitor or Suppress, and why.

Sign up and your first 1,000 addresses clean free inside your account.

This one is for the people who write the emails.

You spend a week on a campaign.
Subject line tested. Story tight. Offer clear.

It goes out to a B2B list.

A chunk of those addresses belong to people who changed jobs months ago.
The address is dead or nobody reads it.
And some of the ones that don't bounce just sit there, never opening, pulling the numbers down.

Then the report lands, and the copy gets the blame.

I see this from the other side.
I clean the lists. You write what goes to them.
We're looking at the same problem from two ends, and neither of us can fix it alone.

So I'd like to build something with the people who serve senders.

Copywriters. Email designers. Email marketing tool consultants. Strategists.

A co-written piece on what really drags a campaign down.
A spot in our partner directory, so clients can find you.
Or a simple swap. Your craft, my list data, one post each.

Comment "collab" or message me, and let's pick one.

If you run an agency, you've inherited this list.

A client hands over their contacts.
Half of the B2B ones are info@, sales@, support@, admin@.

Somebody opted in once. Maybe years ago.
That person has probably moved on.

Now three different people read that inbox.
One of them is new, doesn't recognise the brand, and hits spam.

That complaint doesn't stay in that inbox.
Mailbox providers notice it, and your client's sending reputation takes the hit.
Consent gets murky too, because the person who agreed isn't there anymore.

Your client won't see any of this.
They'll see the numbers dip and ask you why.

This is where I can help, quietly.

Send the list to Review My Emails before the first campaign.
It comes back white label, every address with a verdict and the reason, under your name.

You keep the client. You earn 15% on every list.
And you walk into the first report meeting with answers.

Your email list is lying to you.

Every address came back "valid". The dashboard says delivered. And the results still slide.

Here is the gap. A validity check only confirms the mailbox can receive mail. It cannot see the address nobody has read in two years, or the person who marks everything as spam.

Valid tells you it can receive. It does not tell you whether you should send.

Review My Emails gives every address one verdict, Keep, Monitor or Suppress, with the reason.

Three steps to a healthier list, in this order.

One. Remove what can never be delivered: dead mailboxes, dead domains, typos.

Two. Separate the uncertain ones: domains that accept every address, people who went quiet, addresses that soft bounced. Watch them, do not blast them.

Three. Send to your engaged people first, then widen slowly.

We do steps one and two for you, with the reason for every address.

You see a 40% open rate and feel great.

But since 2021, Apple Mail pre-loads the tracking pixel through its own servers. Those opens count whether anyone read the email or not. Security scanners and bots add more.

So a high open rate does not prove good deliverability.

Watch clicks, replies, complaints and hard bounces instead. They are much harder to fake.

And if the list underneath is full of addresses that never engage, no metric will save the send.

500 engaged contacts can outperform 50,000 dormant ones.

Mailbox providers weigh engagement, opens, clicks, replies and a low complaint rate, far above your subscriber count.

So every quiet address you keep mailing is not neutral. It dilutes the signal from the people who actually want to hear from you.

List size is the number you report. Engagement is the number that gets you into the inbox.

Find out how much of your list is really listening.

"Never delete a subscriber" and "delete everyone who is quiet" are both wrong.

The better rule has four steps.

Pick an inactivity window that matches how often you send. 90 days for a weekly newsletter, longer for an annual renewal.

Send a short win-back sequence.

Suppress the people who do not respond, so they stop getting mail but stay on record.

Delete only when keeping the record no longer serves you.

That is how you lighten the list without losing anyone by accident.

Who actually reads info@?

Usually several people. Nobody owns the decision to open or click. And when a colleague who never signed up sees your email, they hit spam instead of unsubscribe.

Role addresses are fine for transactional mail tied to an account. For bulk marketing they carry real risk.

That is why we flag them instead of treating them as just "valid".

A parked domain is registered, but nobody uses it for real mail or a real website.

Some of them accept every address you send to. So a basic validator says "deliverable", and the email disappears.

No bounce. No open. Just a quiet drag on your engagement and your sender reputation.

We check the domain behind every address, not just the mailbox, so these stop hiding on your list.

A typical email list loses 20% to 30% of its valid, engaged addresses every year. B2B lists lose them faster, because work addresses die when people change jobs.

Many of those contacts never bounce. They just stop opening.

If your email marketing tool charges by contact, you are paying every month for people who are no longer there.

If you have not cleaned in the last 12 months, there is a fair chance 20% or more of your list is not worth sending to.

Disposable email addresses are the junk food of your list.

A quick hit of satisfaction, a new signup. Then nothing.

Throwaway inboxes expire within hours. After that, every email to them bounces. Many open once and then go dark.

Know someone who runs giveaways, quizzes or free downloads? Send them my way. I pay 15% for life on anyone you refer.

Sending more does not mean reaching more.

Extra frequency works on people who are already engaged. Pushed to lukewarm contacts, it speeds up the decay: fewer opens, more spam complaints, a weaker reputation.

And once your domain reputation drops, fewer emails reach the inbox for everyone, including your best customers.

Segment first. Send the most to the people who want it most.

Email is famous for returning roughly $40 for every $1 spent.

That number comes with conditions. A permission-based list. Authentication set up properly so messages reach the inbox. Sending tied to who is actually engaging.

A neglected list sent without those basics does not earn the famous number.

The cheapest place to start is the list itself.

For years I cleaned lists by hand for clients.

The same question came up every time. Not "is this address valid" but "should I still send to it".

So I built Review My Emails to answer that question for anyone, not just the people who could book my time. Every address gets Keep, Monitor or Suppress, and the reason.

[YT: add one real moment from your consulting days that made you build it.]

People ask why a person gets obsessed with email lists.

For me it was one launch. [YT: the real story, the client anonymised as Client A.]

What I learned that day is the thing I still say to everyone: the problem is rarely the copy. It is who the email is going to.

If you work with senders too, copywriters, designers, strategists, I would love to build something together.

I do not think the email world needs another vendor shouting at each other.

It needs more people who understand why good emails end up in the wrong place.

So here is my open offer. If you write, teach or build anything for people who send email, let's make something together. A guest post, a teardown, a spot in our partner directory.

It takes one of us to succeed for all of us to succeed.

Everyone has tips for growing an email list.

Fewer people talk about what those new signups do to the list you already have.

A bigger list does not mean better results. Engagement does. So every growth push needs a hygiene step behind it: catch typos at signup, confirm new subscribers, and check the list before the big send.

Grow it. Then keep it worth sending to.

[YT: add your three favourite no-ads growth tactics.]

I once wrote a whole article with one message: just authenticate your domain.

It still stands. SPF, DKIM and DMARC do not push you into the inbox on their own. They set the trust floor. Everything else you do stands on top of them.

This is also one thing list cleaning cannot fix. It is infrastructure.

If yours is a mess and you do not know where to start, the free SOS Hotline is there for exactly that.

"We'll just switch email marketing tools."

It rarely fixes deliverability. Your domain reputation, list quality, complaint rate and engagement history travel with you. A new platform also means new IPs that need weeks of warmup, and throttling can make things worse first.

Fix the authentication and the list before you move house.

Not sure which one is broken? That is what the free SOS Hotline is for.

Removing the word FREE will not rescue you from spam.

The spammy words idea dates back to the filters of the late 1990s. Today, Gmail and Microsoft weigh sender reputation, authentication, engagement and complaints far above individual words.

A trusted sender with an engaged list can write hype copy. An untrusted one can get filtered with the most careful wording.

So stop editing adjectives. Look at who you are sending to.

Your dashboard says 98% delivered.

That only means the receiving server accepted the email. Whether it landed in the inbox, the promotions tab, spam, or got filtered quietly, your email marketing tool cannot see.

That is why a sender can look healthy and still lose sales every week.

The list is the part you control first.

Yes, you can request a Spamhaus removal yourself.

But it only works after the cause is fixed. Look up which list flagged you and why, fix the actual problem, then file the request.

Spamhaus evaluates the fix, not the apology.

And a blocklisting is about how you send, not about the people on your list, so it is an infrastructure job. If you are stuck, the free SOS Hotline can walk you through it.

Most cleaning tools catch the obvious: typos, dead domains, mailboxes that bounce, role accounts.

They cannot see consent gaps from scraped or event lists, or the disengaged subscribers who push your complaint rate up.

So validation is the start, not the finish. Pair it with engagement: who is opening, clicking and replying.

That is why our verdicts are Keep, Monitor or Suppress, not just valid or invalid.

There are email topics that people who work at email companies would love to write about, but cannot on their own company blog.

If that is you, I would love to host it.

A guest piece, a teardown, a short video. You bring the expertise, we bring the audience and the credit goes to you.

Comment or message me with the topic you have been wanting to write.