Deliverability
If we take a trip down memory lane (some of our lanes might be longer than others), we might remember our parents telling us if we didn’t tidy our bedroom or help clean the dishes, we couldn’t play with friends or go to a movie. Let’s face it, none of us wanted to miss either of those things. We wanted to get our chores done so we could see our buddies and share some laughs or see the latest release at the theater and have a great time.
The life of an email marketer is no different; we know if we don’t clean our email contact lists, we can land in a similar situation where we can’t enjoy the benefits of good email deliverability or a strong sender reputation. So, what do we do to avoid this predicament? You’ve guessed it! Take care of the hard work ahead of time and enjoy the positive results.
Email list hygiene involves removing unsubscribed or unengaged contacts to improve your email deliverability rate and increase conversion rates. This helps your marketing emails reach interested recipients, boosting the chances of a click-through. A clean email list saves you time and effort because you’re only sending communications to people who want to receive them. When you don’t have a clean email list, it may hurt your sender reputation, resulting in messages sent to the spam folder or blocked altogether by an inbox service provider (ISP).
Email list cleanup is good practice because it benefits both senders and recipients and helps your email marketing strategy s쳮d.
Now that you know the importance of email list cleaning, let’s look at its benefits.
Check out these tips to know how you can ensure email list hygiene.
The frequency of email list cleaning depends on the size of your list and your company. If you’re unsure when to clean up your email list, analyzing data on open rates, click-through rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribes may give you a better idea.
Another metric to consider is how many new subscribers you gain each quarter. If that figure’s significant, you may want to clean your list more frequently. Or, if you notice an increasing number of bounces, it indicates the time for email list hygiene.
Companies vary in their needs, and email list cleaning can occur monthly, quarterly, every six months, or yearly. But you should clean up your email list every year, at a minimum.
As an email marketer, your goal is to improve user engagement, which is why removing inactive, unengaged contacts is just as important as growing your email contact list with new and captivated subscribers. This helps optimize the performance of your email campaigns and gives them the best chance of making it to the inbox (and not the spam folder).
Consider segmenting your list based on your user engagement metrics. Target those who’ve not opened your emails in the past 3–6 months. Send them a “We miss you!” reactivation email; if they don’t engage in that, remove them from your contact list until after the holiday season.
Let’s face it, if they haven’t engaged with you in the last six months, the message is pretty straightforward, they’ve lost interest. You can always try to capture their attention again once the holiday season is over.
Besides cleaning your list, it’s important to not increase your sending frequency and volumes too quickly. You may think your list is performing better than ever, so you’re exempt from the normal emailing rules, but that’s not true.
ISPs often become suspicious if you go from emailing your list once a week to daily and have huge spikes in your sending volume. While we know it’s tempting to send more emails to get a higher ROI, you just need to warm the ISPs up to the idea first. You might look suspiciously like a spammer if you send significantly higher volumes in a short time, so take your time and slowly increase sending over a few weeks.
Now you finally know the secret to reaching a recipient’s inbox is cleaning your email list and ramping up your sending gradually to valid email addresses…not cleaning your room!
At Mailjet, we recommend only targeting subscribers who’ve engaged with your emails in the last six months. Focus on your most active subscribers first, increasing the size of your list and sending volume slowly. That way, your efforts won’t go to waste, and you’ll avoid your emails being blocked.
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