How to re-score your list health during recovery?

You've cleaned the list, throttled your sends, and started warming up your best subscribers again. But how do you actually know if it's working? Re-scoring your list health during recovery isn't about running a single audit and calling it done. It's an ongoing process that tells you who's safe to send to, who needs more time, and who you should stop mailing altogether.

Here's how to build a working scoring model and use it to drive your recovery decisions.

Step 1: Pull the engagement signals that matter

Start with what your ESP can export: last open date, last click date, total opens in the last 90 days, and total clicks in the last 90 days. These four fields are the core of any health score. Opens tell you someone noticed you. Clicks tell you someone cared.

For each subscriber, you're building a simple point total. A rough starting framework that works well in recovery contexts looks like this.

• Clicked in the last 30 days: +4 points
• Opened in the last 30 days: +3 points
• Clicked in the last 31 to 90 days: +2 points
• Opened in the last 31 to 90 days: +1 point
• No open in over 90 days: 0 points (no bonus)
• Previous spam complaint on record: -5 points
• Previous hard bounce on record: disqualify entirely
• Unsubscribed and re-added: flag for manual review

You don't need a complex algorithm. What you need is a consistent rule you apply to every address the same way.

Step 2: Layer in source quality

Engagement signals show you what happened. Source quality tells you what to expect. Go back through your acquisition data and tag each subscriber by where they came from: organic opt-in, contest entry, co-registration, trade show list, purchased list, and so on.

Addresses from high-quality sources that still show low engagement are more recoverable than addresses from sketchy sources with the same low engagement. During recovery, you want to weight source quality as a tie-breaker. If two subscribers both have a score of 2, the one who opted in through your website form deserves a second chance before the one who came from a third-party list you imported two years ago.

Step 3: Translate scores into sending tiers

And once every subscriber has a score, group them into tiers. You'll use these tiers to decide who gets your recovery sends and in what order. A simple three-tier model works well here.

• Tier 1 (scores 5 and above): Your safe send segment. These are your recently engaged subscribers. Send to them first, every time, during recovery. They protect your sender reputation while you rebuild it.
• Tier 2 (scores 1 to 4): Lukewarm. They've shown some life but not recently. Reintroduce them slowly after your Tier 1 sends are producing clean results. Watch complaint and unsubscribe rates closely when you mail them.
• Tier 3 (score of 0 or negative): Suppress for now. This isn't permanent, but during active recovery you can't afford the complaint risk. Run a re-permission campaign for this group separately once you're out of crisis mode.

Step 4: Re-score on a schedule, not just once

List health during recovery changes fast. Someone who was Tier 2 last month might have clicked three times this week and earned their way into Tier 1. Someone in Tier 1 who stopped opening after you sent more frequently might need to drop down.

Re-run your scoring every two to four weeks during active recovery. Update your tiers. Let the data move people up or down. This is what makes the model useful over time rather than just a one-time snapshot.

But if your ESP supports custom fields or engagement scoring natively (tools like Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign make this easy to automate), build the scoring logic directly into a segment and let it update dynamically. If you're on something simpler, a monthly CSV export and manual scoring pass is fine. It doesn't have to be automated to work.

Not sure how your current engagement levels compare to what ISPs expect for a clean recovery? Our SOS hotline is free and we're happy to look at your numbers with you. Book a free call here.