emailrules.today
Stop 8 of 8WorkingThe next morning

Sunset / sunsetting

Stopping or reconfirming people who have not engaged for a long time — protects reputation.

Say it out loud

“We stop emailing people who have ignored us for months. It sounds like losing a list; it is how the rest of it arrives.”

Sunsetting means ending regular marketing to contacts who have not engaged, usually after one re-permission attempt. Gmail and Yahoo both direct bulk senders towards willing recipients. There is no official number of days — you set the policy from your own cadence, and a weekly sender's threshold is not a quarterly sender's.

In your dataA policy, not a number someone read on a blogOur framingscrolls →
Weekly sender no click in 180 days → sunset

Clicks, not opens. Opens include machines, so an open-based rule keeps dead addresses and cuts live ones.

Monthly sender no click in 365 days → sunset
Before removing: one re-permission send, then stop

One. A four-part "we miss you" series to people who have ignored you for a year is a complaint-rate event.

What it protects
recycled spam traps activate after months of silence
complaint rate falls because the audience wants it

Yours

Nobody does this for you.

What goes wrong

Building the rule on opens. Since 2021 an inactive Apple Mail address looks engaged and an engaged image-blocking reader looks dead, so an open-based sunset policy removes precisely the wrong people.

What people get told

The claim. “There is a standard 180-day rule.”

Actually. There is not, and it is not published by any provider as a threshold. 180 days is a reasonable default for a weekly sender and meaningless for one that sends quarterly. Set it from your own cadence and write down why.

The dated rules behind this

A definition is not a citation. These are the pages with the primary source, the date it was published, and what to do about it.

See also

Where this sits

Stop 8, it comes back as numbers. The reactions become a dashboard, and the dashboard is lying to you a little.

← BeforeOpen rateNext →Holdout group

FAQ

Awkward questions

Who is this actually for?

People who ship email and are too busy to re-read every PDF: week-one marketers, lifecycle/CRM, deliverability, multi-country ops, DTC brands, agencies — on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Braze, HubSpot, SFMC, or something else. Pick your tool and geos so product-specific pages only appear when they match. EU and UK are first-class filters. Not for people who sell tools about email and need a fake score to demo.

Why only ~40 rules? Isn’t that… thin?

On purpose. A wall of 400 undated “best practices” is how you look busy and still get burned. Every page needs a primary source we actually read. Thin and checkable beats fat and folklore. Europe, bulk inbox rules, measurement honesty, and protocol topics like BIMI/DMARC policy are on the shelf when we can cite them — not every Member State and not every vendor myth. Coverage map lists what we still refuse to invent.

Is this legal advice?

No. If it were, you’d have a billable hour and a longer PDF. This is a dated operator reference written by an email geek. Confirm anything high-stakes with counsel who knows your facts. Same for “will this make me compliant?” — no tool does that. Lawyers and judges do. We say what the sources say and what to do first on Monday.

Why no trust score out of 100?

Because we refuse to invent a number you can’t audit. Fake scores sell seed tests and panic. You get findings, dates, and links. If that feels less exciting than a red dial, good — you’re not the red-dial customer.

Why should I trust you more than my ESP’s blog?

ESPs sell seats. Seed-score vendors sell fear. AI invents citations when nobody watches. We sell nothing today — no pixels, no placement scores, no affiliate — so we can say when a tool is the problem. A human verifies, dates, and corrects in public. Tools may help draft; they do not ship unsourced claims. Check the primary links. Fail that test and leave.

Do I need an account?

No. Filters live in this browser and the URL. Share the link. That’s it. Accounts come later only if they earn it — not so we can nurture you about email.

I’m an agency. Where’s multi-client mode?

We tried a client-name CRM on the setup card. It made the product feel like work before it felt useful. Role filters + copy link + one-page brief (optional PDF title) is enough for now. Complexity comes back when the free shelf is habit, not before.

Is the quiet changelog a bug?

No. Quiet means nothing material moved. We don’t invent urgency so the homepage looks “alive.” Sticky risks still show what usually needs a person when the market is still.