7 Spring Email Cleaning Tips
Spring is finally here once again, which means it’s time to start thinking about a little Spring Cleaning. Since you are already thinking about freshening up your home, and switching out your winter clothes, why not give your email list the same treatment?
For any business that relies on email data, there are few things worse than having a disorganized email list. But you don’t have to smash your head on your keyboard, or be embarrassed, there are experts you can call that can make cleaning your email lists a breeze.
The Data Quality Experts at Webbula are here to help. A clean list can have an immediate impact on your business, increasing deliverability, improving your Sender Reputation, and much more. To help out, here are 7 tips for cleaning and organizing your email lists this spring!
Face the Truth
Take a hard look at your contact list, and ask yourself these questions:
- Are there email addresses you haven’t sent to in a long time?
- Do you have a high bounce rate everytime you send an email campaign?
- Is your list disorganized?
- Does it make you stressed?
If you answered yes to all, it is probably time for a little Spring Cleaning.
Clean your List
If you regularly keep up with cleaning your list you can identify the hidden threats lurking in your emails such as spam traps, honeypots, malicious moles, and other threats. Identifying low-quality emails and threats can help you stay off blacklists and avoid the resulting downtime, headaches, and remediation costs.
Remove Bounces
You can remove bounces from your own database after hitting the send button, but a verification provider offers a more comprehensive, proactive look at your list. Use a professional verification service to identify inactive and non-deliverable emails to increase deliverability and campaign revenue.
Say Goodbye
Opted-in email addresses can turn hazardous over time. Additionally, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) consider user engagement as part of your sender reputation. If a user hasn’t opened or clicked on your emails in a while, consider a re-engagement campaign to bring them back. If that doesn’t work, take them off your list. If you continuously remove the “dead weight” it can boost deliverability to the rest of your contacts.
Get Organized
Once your list is clean, the next step is to organize it. Segment by demographics, geography, industry, income, purchase history, or any other metrics depending on your products and messaging. A recent MailChimp survey states, “segmented campaigns performed markedly better than their non-segmented counterparts. Over 9 million emails revealed segmented campaigns average 14.31% higher open rates and 100.95% higher click rates than non-segmented campaigns.”
In with the New
Adding new contacts is a good way to keep your list fresh. Attract subscribers with new marketing initiatives, promotions, and special discounts. Capture email addresses on your website in exchange for white papers and other engaging content.
More Information
Learn about your list so you can target more precisely- down to the individual. Business Wire states, “New research from Return Path reveals that just 80 percent of commercial email is delivered to the inbox, while the remainder—a full 20 percent—is diverted to spam folders or gets blocked altogether.” The new reporting is relatively consistent with the benchmark in previous years, which reported a 79 percent global inbox placement rate according to BusinessWires.com. While slightly improved, it means there are still marketers out there missing out.
A little spring cleaning — in the form of list hygiene, verification, segmentation, and data enhancement — can optimize your campaigns to drive increased revenues.