Evaluate and Clean Up Your Email Lists

[#1]

Whether you run a small business or a nonprofit, you may have spent a significant amount of time and effort building your email list. However, it's important to regularly clean up your contact list to ensure its health and effectiveness.

List cleanup involves removing inactive or unengaged subscribers, as well as identifying and addressing any issues that may affect your email deliverability and sender reputation.

Why is List Cleanup important?

Maintaining a clean email list is crucial for several reasons:

• Maintaining sender reputation: Your sender reputation affects how email providers filter and deliver your emails. By regularly cleaning your list, you can avoid common mistakes that negatively impact your reputation, such as sending to misspelled or purchased email addresses.
• Improving bounce rate: Bounce rate measures the number of emails that were not delivered to recipients' inboxes. By cleaning your list and removing invalid or inactive email addresses, you can reduce your bounce rate and improve email deliverability.
• Increasing deliverability: A clean email list improves the chances of your emails reaching your subscribers' inboxes. By removing unengaged or uninterested subscribers, you can optimize your email campaigns for better engagement and deliverability.
• Optimizing email management costs: Many email management tools charge based on the size of your list. By regularly cleaning your list, you can reduce costs and ensure that you're only paying for engaged and active subscribers.

How do I clean up my lists?

• Conduct a preliminary clean:
  • Remove unused segments and outdated contacts.
  • Check for contacts on multiple active lists and delete duplicates.
  • Remove role addresses (e.g., marketing@company.com) and instead add individual personal points of contact for clients.
• Segment your list:
  • Divide your subscribers into three groups: engaged, partially engaged, and disengaged.
  • Focus on improving engagement for the partially engaged group by making subtle changes to your email content, running A/B tests, or asking for preferences through polls.
  • For the disengaged group, try reengaging them with active campaigns or exclusive discounts. If they remain uninterested, send a goodbye email and delete them after a week or two if they don't respond.
• Implement a permission reminder:
  • Add a line at the top of your emails reminding subscribers why they opted in and giving them the option to evaluate their subscription.
  • Reduce spam reports and allow subscribers to unsubscribe if they no longer find value in your emails.
• Address bounces:
  • Use tags to track bounced email addresses and identify consistent problem addresses.
  • Reach out to leads with other contact information to update their details.
  • Delete addresses recommended for removal by your email provider.
• Reengage your audience with a campaign:
  • Focus on the partially engaged and disengaged groups.
  • Offer exclusive discounts or incentives to rekindle their interest.
• Offer the option of opting down:
  • In your final email to unengaged subscribers, offer them the option to receive fewer emails or specific types of content. This gives them a chance to stay connected on their own terms.

Regularly cleaning your email list and implementing these strategies will help you maintain a healthy and engaged subscriber base, improve email deliverability, and optimize your email marketing efforts.

We value your input! Maintaining clean and organized email lists is crucial, and there are numerous approaches to achieve this. We're interested in hearing about the methods that resonate with you and that you incorporate into your daily contact management routine. Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!