Yahoo is rolling out the recycling of old email addresses. This action starts with the return – bouncing is the more technical term – of all email account that are eligible for reuse.
Yahoo, like all other large free email providers, has a problem. They are dealing with a large amount of sleeping accounts where emails are only delivered, but nobody has looked at them in years. Maybe because the user passed away. Or he switched to another provider and never looked back at his old account. In times where ISPs are throwing around a lot of free space, this is hardly a problem that catches the eye of the public. Bud “delivered” does not mean that you’re dealing with an active reader.
Signal
On the other hand a lot of fun names for email addresses and accounts remain blocked, while another surfer could actually do something with that name. That’s why Yahoo wants to shake things up. Any address that hasn’t been active in over a year, will be eligible. As of July 15, Yahoo will begin to bounce all email that is sent to these “soon to be deleted” accounts.
Segmentation?
This will be the first same for email marketers that there is something wrong with the email address. There are email marketers who recommend – especially when you have a lot of yahoo addresses in your mailing lists – to segment your lists accordingly. This way, you can quickly take out all the bouncing addresses. That way, you can avoid damage to your reputation.
Unsubscribe
In a second step, before the final deletion, Yahoo uses a quarantine period of thirty days. They will unsubscribe the email address from every list where it was registered. As far as this can be done automatically. After this phase, the account and all the additional data will be destroyed. This email address will then be released for the public.
There is a chance that this operation will be followed with suspicion by the other free giants of email account provides. If Yahoo succeeds, we’ll have to take into account possible copy cats!