How to Clean a Grubby Email List
Keeping your email marketing list performing to its full potential requires taking steps to make sure that the leads on your list want to be there and that the email addresses you are sending to are legitimate addresses. Failing to do this can lead to an email list that is bogged down by inactive and bad addresses that hurt the ROI of your campaigns. It can also damage your reputation with ISPs by generating spam complaints and high bounce rates. Some tips for keeping your list clean on an ongoing basis, in conjunction with your email hygiene software (such as ListWise), are listed below.
Remove Bad Addresses
Whether they have gone bad over time or are due to lax email validation policies in your lead acquisition process, it’s important to use an email address checker to identify and remove bad email addresses from your list on a regular basis to avoid damaging your standing with your ESP. Check your bounce-back reports for invalid addresses and run a duplicate address check as well to remove dupes from your list.
Remove Unsubscribes Promptly
A lead who doesn’t want to be on your list should be removed as soon as you receive their unsubscribe request. Tardiness in removing them may cause some of your emails to be categorized as spam, hurting your sender reputation.
Look for Alias (or Role-Based) Addresses
These email addresses, such as sales@ and info@ company.com often cause delivery failures as all the addresses associated with them may not have opted-in to receive your emails. Remove these addresses from your list when you find them.
Attempt to Re-Engage Inactives
Leads that have not responded to any of your emails after a certain amount of time should be considered inactive and either deleted from your list or moved to an inactive file. Before doing this, however, attempt to re-engage them by sending an email validation message designed to elicit a response – either by asking them to update their contact data or preferences or by offering them a special deal of some sort.
Segment Your List
In addition to making sure that your main list is focused on active contacts, you may also want to segment your list further by demographics, buying behavior, or some other metric. This allows you to launch targeted campaigns to a customer base that is predisposed to look favorably on your offer. By sending focused emails, you also are likely to cut down on unsubscribes and spam complaints, helping keep your sender reputation high as well as increasing potential conversions and sales from your campaigns.