Discover the art of scrubbing your email list. Regularly cleaning your email list not only benefits your email marketing strategy but also has the potential to improve important metrics like conversion and open rates.
Email marketing remains one of the most widely used and effective digital marketing channels, with billions of daily email users worldwide. Whether you’re running a small business or a large corporation, email marketing provides a cost-efficient way to establish direct communication with your customers and drive business growth. Building a substantial email subscriber list, in particular, enables easy distribution of newsletters, product promotions, and exclusive offers.
However, no matter how much effort you put into growing your subscriber base, there comes a time when cleaning your email list becomes necessary. Maintaining a trim and well-curated email list, filled with engaged subscribers and valid email addresses, brings a myriad of benefits to your business.
A clean email list is more likely to result in better open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, elevating the success of your email campaigns.
So, what does it mean to clean your email list? Cleaning your email list involves removing unengaged, unsubscribed, invalid, or duplicate contacts.
By conducting email list cleaning, you can enhance the overall quality of your list and maximize the effectiveness of your email campaigns. In some cases, scrubbing your email list can even help you comply with email marketing laws and regulations such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the US and GDPR in the EU.
Here’s what you need to pay attention to during the list cleaning process:
Unengaged or inactive subscribers: These are the subscribers who have signed up for your email list but show little to no interaction with your emails. They rarely click on links or call-to-action buttons, and sometimes they don’t even open your emails at all. A high number of unengaged subscribers can negatively impact your sender reputation, email deliverability, and open rates.
Unsubscribed email addresses: If someone clicks on the unsubscribe link in your emails, it’s important to promptly remove them from your email list within 10 business days to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
Invalid email addresses: Sending emails to invalid addresses will result in bounces and failed deliveries. These email addresses are usually misspelled or no longer in use due to user abandonment or a defunct email provider. Removing bounced email addresses reduces your email marketing costs and helps safeguard your sender reputation.
Duplicate email addresses: Sending multiple identical emails to the same address can annoy your subscribers and cause email service providers to mark your emails as spam. Avoid triggering spam complaints by removing duplicate emails during the list cleaning process.
What does it mean to clean your email list?
Email list cleaning is when you remove unengaged, unsubscribed, invalid, or duplicate contacts.
Why should you invest time in cleaning up your email list? Let’s explore the benefits:
Increased engagement: Regularly maintaining your email list leads to more engagement and ultimately more conversions. By removing inactive subscribers and invalid addresses, you can focus on engaging those who have a genuine interest in your business. This, in turn, improves email metrics such as inbox placement rates, open rates, and click-through rates.
Improved email deliverability: Better engagement goes hand in hand with improved deliverability. With fewer bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints, your emails have a higher chance of reaching your intended recipients’ inboxes.
Increase ROI: By reducing costs associated with inactive subscribers, you can save money on your email marketing campaigns. Targeting a smaller group of high-quality and engaged subscribers is more likely to generate sales compared to having an email list filled with inactive subscribers.
More insightful data: By removing outdated and fake email addresses, you can gain a more accurate view of your email list. Use the patterns and trends you observe to segment your audience effectively and make informed decisions about your email marketing strategy.
Compliance with standards: It’s essential to know the difference between compliant and non-compliant email lists. Regularly update your email list to ensure compliance with email marketing laws and regulations. Always have permission to send emails to everyone on your list to avoid damaging your reputation, as sending emails to people who don’t want to receive them can trigger spam complaints.
Now, let’s dive into how you can scrub your email list effectively:
Identify and remove problematic email addresses: Begin the process by pinpointing and eliminating potentially harmful email addresses. You can do this manually or with the help of specialized email marketing tools. Specifically, focus on the following types of email addresses for removal:
- Email addresses with incorrect formats, syntax structures, or domain names: Email verification services can assist in identifying these types of addresses.
- Email addresses with no legitimate mailbox: An email verification service can determine if a mailbox exists and is able to receive emails.
- Bounced email addresses: Conduct an audit to ensure the validity of your email list by checking for bounced emails. You can use email marketing software or send a test email to a select group of addresses and monitor the bounce rate.
- Catch-all email addresses: Remove catch-all email addresses from your list using a catch-all email checker. These addresses accept any email sent to them, whether valid or not.
- Spam email addresses: Avoid purchasing email lists, as they often contain spam traps and problematic addresses. Use a spam trap checker to identify spam traps in your email list and eliminate them to prevent being blacklisted by internet service providers.
Re-engage inactive subscribers
Before removing inactive subscribers from your email list, consider implementing a re-engagement campaign to reignite their interest in your products or services. It’s beneficial to have a larger audience and wider reach. Select less-active or disengaged subscribers and offer them special discounts and perks to show that you value their presence. You can even consider enticing them back with a free gift. To further stimulate engagement, start soliciting feedback and include links to your social media accounts in your emails, if you haven’t already.
Identify and remove inactive subscribers
Sometimes, despite your re-engagement efforts, subscribers remain inactive. In such cases, it’s best to part ways for mutual benefit. While you can manually remove these subscribers, using an email list cleaning service ensures efficiency and timeliness. These services often provide features like email verification, catch-all checks, spam trap detection, and more. Depending on the service you choose, you may even have access to real-time verification and detailed reporting.
Make list cleaning a habit
Regularly cleaning your email list is crucial for the success of your future marketing campaigns. Each cleanse proactively mitigates issues such as spam complaints and hard bounces, while providing deeper insights into your audience. These insights enable you to effectively segment and target your subscribers with relevant content, leading to improved conversions and better results.
Here are some best practices to follow when cleaning your email list:
Use double opt-in for new subscribers: Even if someone signs up for your mailing list, ensure their interest is genuine by sending a confirmation email with a confirmation link. This additional step helps verify the validity and active monitoring of email addresses.
Make unsubscribing easier: Ensure that your unsubscribe links are prominently visible and easily accessible in your emails. This simplifies the list-cleaning process and reduces the chance of triggering spam complaints.
Utilize marketing automation: Take advantage of marketing automation tools to organize your email lists and send automated emails. Platforms like Mailchimp offer features such as welcome emails to nurture new relationships, transactional emails to update customers on their purchases, and options to collect customer feedback, among others.
Clean regularly: While there is no fixed rule for how often you should clean your email list, a general guideline is to scrub it every 6 months. This timeframe allows for significant changes to occur in your list without it becoming outdated or inaccurate. For stronger email list hygiene, consider purging it every 3 months. The frequency of cleaning depends on factors such as the size of your list, its rate of subscriber change, and your email marketing goals.
By maintaining a clean email list, you can experience the benefits of improved conversion rates, better growth, and increased engagement. With better inbox placement rates, open rates, and click-through rates, you can confidently reach out to the right people and achieve your business objectives. If you’re looking for other ways to grow your audience, consider starting a newsletter with automated emails. Mailchimp’s email marketing software provides drag-and-drop email templates, customer targeting tools, and data-driven analytics to support your marketing efforts.
