You recently knocked Dell for removing you, a paying customer, from one of its lists because you hadn’t clicked recently. Should marketers ever remove inactives from their database? What is your overall prescription for how email marketers should deal with the growing problem of inactives?

I’ve probably bought more than 150 Dell laptops, desktops and servers over the years, and I had been on Dell lists for five or six years. I might go three months or so without actually opening a message, but I loved having them in the inbox because I could tell exactly where Dell was in its sales cycle.

About three months ago, I wanted to see where Dell was because I needed to buy, and I went into my inbox to find the most recent email. It wasn’t there. Dell had taken me off their list. How stupid was that?

Here’s how the nudge effect works: Right about this time, I had been thinking, “What are we, a Dell shop?” I had begun to think about HP for pricing. Was that coincidence? I haven’t stopped buying Dell, but I haven’t resubscribed, either.