What is a typical list decay rate?

If you've been sending emails for a year or two and noticed your open rates slowly dropping, there's a good chance your list is decaying faster than you think. The typical decay rate lands somewhere between 20% and 30% per year, though plenty of senders see it go higher.

That means if you start January with 10,000 contacts, you could realistically end December with only 7,000 to 8,000 addresses that are still valid and engaged. The rest have gone stale through a mix of job changes, inbox abandonment, and email provider closures.

The number isn't the same for everyone though. A few factors move it significantly:

• B2B lists decay faster. Work email addresses are tied to jobs. When someone changes roles or companies, that address goes dark. B2B senders often see 2% to 3% monthly decay, which stacks up to 25% to 30% per year easily.
• B2C lists decay a bit slower, but they still decay. Personal addresses get abandoned, people switch providers, or they simply stop caring about your brand. A realistic B2C rate is 15% to 25% annually.
• Sending cadence matters. If you send infrequently, you won't notice decay building up until it bites you hard. Active senders catch stale addresses faster because bounces and disengagement show up sooner.
• Industry plays a role too. Tech and finance lists (lots of corporate emails) decay more aggressively. Consumer lifestyle, retail, and media lists tend to hold up a bit better, at least in the short term.

The tricky part is that decay isn't just about hard bounces. A lot of decayed contacts don't bounce at all. They just stop opening. That's sometimes called subscriber churn, and it's arguably more damaging because your list still looks big while your deliverability quietly suffers.

If you haven't cleaned your list in the last 12 months, there's a fair chance 20% or more of your contacts are no longer worth sending to. We clean lists at RME if you want a proper look at what's actually there (yes, we can handle the messy ones too ;).