A list that was accurate when you built it will not stay accurate on its own. People change jobs, companies get acquired, email addresses go stale, and new contacts become relevant as your target accounts grow. A list that is never refreshed degrades quietly in the background until the bounce rates, wrong contacts, and outdated personalisation start showing up in your results.
List refresh is the weekly process we run to keep that from happening.
What degrades and why
Contact data has a shelf life. Industry estimates put it at around 25 to 30 percent annual decay, which works out to roughly two to three percent of any list becoming inaccurate every month.
The most common causes are people changing roles or companies, email addresses being deactivated after someone leaves, companies rebranding or changing their domain, and new decision-makers joining accounts that were previously unreachable.
None of this is dramatic on its own. But left unmanaged across a full campaign list it adds up quickly.
What we refresh every week
As part of the standard weekly cycle we run four types of update across every active list.
Bounce removal is the most immediate. Any contact whose email bounced in the previous send cycle gets removed from the active list the same day. We attempt re-enrichment to find an alternative address. If none is found the contact gets marked as unreachable and excluded from future sends.
Job change detection monitors your contact list for people who have moved to a new company or changed roles. If a key contact at a target account leaves, we find their replacement and update the record. If a contact from your list moves to a new company that also fits your ICP, we flag them as a warm contact at a new account.
New contact additions keep the list growing as your target accounts evolve. If a new decision-maker joins a tier one account or a company expands into a role that is relevant to your ICP, we add them to the active list and run them through the standard hygiene process before they enter a sequence.
Signal updates refresh the intent signal data associated with each account. New hiring activity, funding announcements, or technology changes that appeared in the past week get added to the account record so the outreach stays relevant.
Why this matters for deliverability
Keeping bounce rates low is not just about list quality. It is about protecting your sender reputation.
Email providers track the bounce rate coming from your sending domains. A consistent bounce rate above two percent signals that you are sending to unverified or outdated data, which gradually reduces your inbox placement rate. Once that reputation is damaged it takes weeks to repair.
Running weekly hygiene on your active lists keeps bounce rates consistently low and your sender reputation intact.
How job change signals create new opportunities
Job changes in your contact list are not just a data maintenance task. They are a source of pipeline.
When a champion who was engaged with your outreach moves to a new company, they take their knowledge of your product with them. Reaching out to them at their new role, referencing the previous conversation, is one of the highest-converting touches in outbound because the trust is already partly established.
We flag these contacts separately and bring them to your attention as warm opportunities rather than just updating the record and moving on.
FAQ
How often does the full list get refreshed?
We run the core refresh cycle every week as part of the standard campaign management process. The full re-enrichment pass, where we go back to source data for every record on the list, runs quarterly unless performance data suggests it needs to happen sooner.
What happens to contacts who change jobs mid-sequence?
If we detect a job change on a contact who is currently inside an active sequence we pause their sequence immediately. We research their new role and company, check whether the new account fits your ICP, and either update the outreach or move them to a separate warm contact list depending on the situation.
Can we see what changed after each refresh cycle?
Yes. We include a summary of list changes in the weekly performance update. You can see how many contacts were removed, how many new ones were added, and how many job change signals were flagged for your review.