Organisations that overlook the importance of a clean mailing list are putting their businesses at risk.
Good list hygiene avoids damage to your brand and your reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who can give you low reputation scores that affect your delivery rates.
In response many businesses are putting resources into email list maintenance. However, there is still plenty of room for improvement as reflected in the 2014 Silverpop Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study which showed the mean rate of opened email is just 20.2 %.
As the risks of inaction are considerable, there’s no excuse for a dirty list.
List management is not a difficult task once your business puts some effort into it.
There are some simple ways to ensure your list is clean and ready to deliver your marketing efforts.
Are you putting enough attention into WHO receives your email marketing?
If the answer is ‘No’ it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get cleaning before any more damage is done.
Cleaning tips
Whether you clean periodically or regularly you MUST clean your lists – here’s some tips.
1. Clean the obvious
First clean the obvious inactive accounts.
2. Remove bounced & invalid addresses
Bounced emails can play with your measurement metrics so remove them as often as possible.
3. Keep the rubbish out
Be very wary of purchased or third party lists. It might seem like a great idea but in most cases the recipients need to be cross-checked for accuracy which is time-consuming. The list may also not be sufficiently targeted to your audience.
4. Email to people only
Consider limiting the emails that your send to email addresses that contain generic role-based titles such as info@ as it is unlikely these have opted-in to be on the list.
5. Check opt-ins
Ensure contacts on your list have opted-in to receive emails. A double opt-in is a great way to do this. This means you ask subscribers to fill in a signup form first then send them a message that confirms they are on your list. This is a handy automatic way to remove bad email addresses.
Email list management is an integral part of digital marketing see our blog, Why it’s important to keep your email list clean.
Fatpublisher provides email marketing services to our clients. If you are interested in finding out about our email marketing packages, please contact us.
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