I Deleted 200 Inactive Substack Subscribers (Here’s What Happened)

Because Substack is all about engagement.

Credit - Midjourney

I started my Substack in May last year with no following and no experience. Six months later, I’m a Substack Bestseller with a FANTASTIC community. If you’re ready to start earning $1,000+/month from your writing in 2025, let’s make it happen together.

I’m here to help you every step of the way on your Substack journey.

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Engagement > Numbers.

Substack is a special space where people are active, support each other, and come to write.

But like any other platform, some users become inactive: whether due to inconsistency, lack of motivation, or simply feeling burnt out from being online. And that’s okay. But these are not the subscribers you want on your list.

What’s the point of having people as numbers if they never engage or read what you share?!

In fact, 45% of newsletters on Substack are inactive.

It’s time to clean up your subscriber list. Let me show you how I did it.

My subscriber graph over time with the 200 subscribers deleted

How To Filter Your Subscriber List

Head over to your Dashboard > Subscribers on your computer and do these steps.

The magic happens with the filters and Substack has A LOT of them. You can set them as you like, but here is what worked for me.

1. I only filtered for free accounts (obviously).

2. I filtered for emails opened less than 1.

3. I filtered for subscription dates before November, roughly three months prior to today. This ensures that newer subscribers, who may not have had the chance to open an email yet, are not removed.

4. Next, I set the activity to 0 stars. For some reason, possibly due to the email system or differences in interaction via phone or laptop, some subscribers may have opened 0 emails but still click links and like posts, meaning they are active. You don’t want to remove them.

5. Finally, I filtered out links clicked. If someone has clicked 0 links, they are likely inactive.

Although it shows 0 e-mail opens, they are active with links and buttons

Let’s Summarize

To sum this up, see the screenshot below of my filter criteria.

To further test this, I checked 10% of the 200 subscribers that appeared after applying these criteria to verify whether they were truly inactive.

You can do this by clicking on the subscribers in your list, which shows each person’s interaction with your content. Most of the people I checked were indeed either deleted profiles or had not been active here for months.

My filtering criteria

So, there you have it. If you're on Substack to build an engaged community, I believe it's worth filtering your subscriber list every now and then.

I haven't noticed any negative effects from doing this.

I’ll probably do this every 6 months to keep my list neat and clean.

Let me know if you plan to do so, too!

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