Do you know that your email list hygiene can make or break your next marketing campaign? Not sure what this term means? Email list hygiene is the process of weeding out cold or decayed contacts and retaining the responsive ones. Many would benefit from knowing this information. Therefore making a podcast explaining it more in depth would get you many plays. If you would like to have a guaranteed high success rate for your podcast, buy soundcloud plays.
There is nothing wrong with letting go of a chunk of dead contacts from your email lists to make it more effective. In fact, if you don’t indulge in this practice, your sales and marketing teams can experience a steep dip in lead engagement rates. If these professionals work with an unhygienic email list, they will struggle to meet their monthly or quarterly quotas, which will thwart their morale. But, this is not where the story ends!
Here are 5 More Reasons Why a Hygienic Email List Should Be Your Marketing Priority
- Boost Deliverability Rates
What good is a personalized marketing pitch if it bounces off inboxes? With an unhygienic list, this happens often! Keeping your email deliverability rates in check is the key to higher open and click-through rates. It’s no secret, but the very first step for any email marketing campaign to work is a high deliverability rate.
- Avoid Spam Traps
Apart from getting rid of cold contacts, cleansing your email list also means deleting contacts who have unsubscribed to your email communication. If you fail to do this, you will end up sending marketing mailers to individuals and organizations without their permission. Not only can this make you vulnerable to penal action, but the recipients can also mark your brand’s messages as spam. Too many entities flagging you as spam can severely hamper your online reputation.
- Boost MROI
A hygienic email list can increase your Marketing ROIs or MROIs as you send emails only to interested leads with a high purchase propensity. However, with an email list riddled with cold or eroded contacts, even the best emails have a negligible chance of converting. Moreover, sending emails to invalid addresses can activate spam traps. Why go through all this trouble when you can clean up your email lists, which will automatically enhance your ROIs?
- Get Actionable Insights
A hygienic email list paints a picture of who your true prospects are. Also, monitoring the efficacy of an email campaign on a clean list gives you an accurate idea of how engaged your subscribers are. You can then tweak the content you share over emails based on the feedback received.
- Prioritize the Right Prospects
Avoid wasting resources on chasing after cold leads. A clean email list ensures you don’t mail bad leads. It helps you segment active vs inactive prospects. You can then prioritize within active leads and target each sub-set with appropriate messaging.
Best Practices for Achieving Immaculate Email List Hygiene
Here is a 3-step process to clean up your unhygienic email list:
- Eliminate Inactive Leads
Bring together a temporary team to figure out which of the subscribers have not opened your marketing emails in the last 6 months. Perhaps it is time to say goodbye to them! You can also automate this process through email marketing software.
After identifying the inactive contacts, send them a re-engagement email one last time. The ones who open this email get to stay on your list, while others don’t. Although sometimes people do want to stay on your list but haven’t found the time to open your emails. If you think that may be the case, we recommend sending two re-engagement emails set one week apart. Individuals that don’t open your email after two such attempts can be taken off your email list for better hygiene.
- Segment Subscribers into Categories
Within the active list of subscribers, a few will always be more interested than others in your email communication. You need to prioritize them for personalized targeting. Do this by creating sub-segments within your list.
Focusing more on the priority email addresses does not mean you entirely forget the less receptive ones. For every four deals and offers you send to the priority segment, make sure one or two goes to the less active subscribers. Nurture both segments with different intensities and track whether your engagement rate is improving or not.
- Identify and Remove Spam Email Addresses
There are many blacklist operators and hackers that subscribe to marketing lists. Be wary of them, as they create spam traps. Bombarding such email ids for a long time can land you on several blacklists. The only way to get rid of such entities is to keep deleting inactive email ids. We recommend using an online list cleaning tool as manually eliminating suspicious email addresses is a tedious task.
Final Thoughts
Remember, if you notice persistently declining deliverability and open rates, it’s likely that your email list is decaying. So, as a rule of thumb, clean your lists once every six months. This will avoid a build-up of inactive or disengaged subscribers. After all, a hygienic email list is responsible for helping you identify who your genuine customers are. Only when you target them can you improve your brand value and boost revenue.
