> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.instantcampaign.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# List hygiene

> Retire contacts who stopped engaging with a sunset policy, keep your send frequency where Gmail rewards it, and see what you store against what you can mail.

Mailbox providers judge you by how people react to your mail. Contacts who never open anything drag down inbox placement for everyone else on the list, and Gmail's **Manage subscriptions** view shows people which senders send the most. InstantCampaign gives you three tools for this, all in **Settings → Send policies**.

## Sunset policy

A sunset policy retires contacts who have stopped engaging. It is off until you turn it on.

A contact is sunset when, for the number of days you set (default **180**), they have not opened, clicked, converted (recorded a goal) or submitted a form, **and** they received at least the number of marketing emails you set (default **5**) in that time. The second condition means a list you haven't been mailing is never sunset. Machine opens from security scanners don't count as engagement.

Choose what happens to them:

| Action | What happens |
| - | - |
| **Pause marketing email** | They stop receiving marketing email. They stay subscribed, keep receiving transactional email, and their status doesn't change. |
| **Add to a list** | They're added to a list you choose, for a slower programme for example. Nothing is paused. |
| **Re-engage, then pause marketing** | They enter an automation you choose (it must be active). Anyone who still hasn't engaged after the grace period (default **14 days**) has marketing email paused. |

### Preview before you switch it on

Click **Preview** to see how many contacts the settings would sunset today. On a very large workspace the count is estimated from a sample and says so. Previewing changes nothing.

### Running it

**Run now** applies the policy straight away and works on any workspace size: a large workspace is processed in steps, and the next run carries on where the last one stopped. The card shows the last run's counts. A daily automatic run exists but is not scheduled yet.

### Coming back

Any click, conversion, form submission or visit to the preference centre brings a sunset contact back at once, with nothing for you to do. Sunset contacts are counted as **Sunset** in **Contacts and your price** on the billing page.

## Your send frequency, as Gmail shows it

The **Cadence policy** card shows how many marketing emails a typical active subscriber received per week over the last 4 weeks, with the busiest 10% beside it, against a recommended range of **1 to 3 a week**. Transactional email isn't counted.

## Disengaged skip

A [cadence policy](https://docs.instantcampaign.ai/guides/sending-and-workspace/cadence-policy.md) rule: after **10** marketing emails in a row with no open or click, a contact gets at most one marketing email every **4 weeks** until they engage again. Held-back recipients appear under **Analytics → Skipped** with the reason *Cadence (cadence\_disengaged)*. Like every cadence rule it only applies while the cadence policy is on, and never to transactional email.

## Contacts and your price

Your price is set by your plan, never by how many contacts you have. See [Billing and plans](https://docs.instantcampaign.ai/guides/sending-and-workspace/billing-and-plans.md#contacts-and-your-price).

## From Spark or an AI agent

The `get_hygiene_summary` tool returns the same counts and the sunset policy's settings and last run. It never returns addresses.


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