Tip of the Week #84: How to Create a Clean Email List in Gym Lead Machine

Keeping your email list clean is essential for maintaining a strong sending reputation and ensuring your messages actually reach your contacts. In this guide, you’ll learn how to create a valid email list and segment it for different audiences like leads, members, or alumni.

Why This Matters

Email providers are becoming stricter about sending practices. If you consistently send emails to invalid or unsubscribed contacts, your deliverability can suffer.

Creating a clean, filtered list helps you:

  • Improve email deliverability
  • Protect your sender reputation
  • Increase engagement rates

Step 1: Create a Valid Email Smart List

  1. Go to Contacts → Smart Lists
  2. Click Add New Smart List

  3. Name your list:

    “Valid Email List”

  4. Open Advanced Filters and apply the following:
    • Email Status → Is → Valid
    • Add a nested filter:

      • DND (Do Not Disturb) → Email → Disabled

        (This ensures the contact has not unsubscribed)

  5. Click Apply

This will narrow your list down to only contacts who:

  • Have a valid email address
  • Have not unsubscribed
  1. Click Save

Step 2: Create Segmented Lists (Leads, Members, Alumni)

Once your main valid email list is created:

  1. Click Create New Smart List from your existing list
  2. Rename it based on your segment, for example:
    • “Valid Emails – Leads”
    • “Valid Emails – Members”
    • “Valid Emails – Alumni”
  3. Add an additional filter such as:
    • Tag → Is → Lead (or however you track your contacts)

Repeat this process for each audience type you want to target.

Bonus Step: Exclude Contacts with Bounced Emails

To further improve your list quality, you’ll want to automatically tag contacts whose emails bounce.

Create a Workflow

  1. Go to Automation → Workflows
  2. Click Create Workflow (Start from Scratch)

  3. Name it:

    “Bounced Email Tagging”

Set the Trigger

  • Trigger Type: Email Event
  • Event: Bounced
  • Rename trigger to: “Email Bounced” (optional, for clarity)

Add an Action

  • Action: Add Tag
  • Tag Name: “Bounced”
  1. Click Publish

Go back to your Valid Email List and add one more filter:

  • Tag → Is Not → Bounced

Final Result

You now have a high-quality email list that:

  • Includes only valid email addresses
  • Excludes unsubscribed contacts
  • Removes contacts with bounced emails

Keeping your lists clean like this ensures your campaigns perform better and improves the chances of your messages landing where they should—right in your contacts’ inboxes.