Introduction

Email marketing has come a long way from what it was before primarily because of the changing customer preferences. Estimates suggest the over 99% of people tend to open their inboxes regularly however the email Email Marketing Conversion Rate is just a shade over 17%. As a result marketing emails mostly go unnoticed by prospects. Hence to ensure that marketing emails yield results it is important to clean the email list first. It might sound simple but is highly effective in generating engagement and reducing the chances of spam or unsubscription.

The section below discusses email list cleaning in detail and how it can be helpful in an organizational ecosystem. These tips and tricks will help you create a list of subscribers who are interested in learning about a particular product or service.

What is email list cleaning?

Email list cleaning is a regular task that helps update the contact list by eliminating outdated and inactive prospects. Besides it allows a brand to be responsive to active customers. By maintaining proper email hygiene brands ensure the benefit from effective communication with contacts and also eliminate possibility of emails getting marked as spam.

What is the importance of Email list cleaning?

Businesses today are largely data-driven, presence of dirty data always has a negative impact on the email list and marketing efforts. Periodic cleaning of the email lists and adoption of appropriate email hygiene practices prevent emails from being marked as spam, also there are other benefits of cleaning the email lists at regular intervals.

Increases engagement with the target customers and also helps in establishing meaningful bonds with the prospects. Brands can focus specifically on customers interested in their product or service

Email list cleaning plays a major role in boosting Email Marketing Conversion Rate and provides access to an engaged community. It also increases satisfaction among the customers and maximizes revenue earning scope.

Businesses are likely to experience fewer bounces from bad email addresses. It is beneficial for improving brand reputation and enhances deliverability across the customer base.

One simple step comes with a series of advantages. Despite all these benefits businesses that do not clean their email contact list are likely to lose valuable sales opportunities. Also, it has a negative impact on sender’s reputation and their ability to reach subscribers.  Poor quality of the email list is a major hurdle in productive email marketing.

Hence it is important to take care of email marketing metrics, especially open and click-through rates. If marketers notice a fall in these numbers then chances are the email database is causing the problem. An email list cleanup is necessary and will significantly boost the results.

How to clean an email list?

The above section talks about the importance of periodic email list cleaning. Following are some of the best practices for email list cleaning and how it can deliver noteworthy results in the long run.

1.Question the subscribers

If the email list is not able to generate sufficient Email Marketing Conversion Rate, it is likely to give an impression that the recipients are not interested in a particular brand or their content or feel encouraged to take action. Instead of making assumptions the best way to get results is to connect with the subscribers. Following are some of the strategies to use.

Requesting subscribers for feedback

• Using a subscriber poll
• Questioning subscribers to define communication preferences
• Categorize email list

While implementing new strategies to engage new prospects it is not a good idea to take others on the list for granted. Reports suggest email lists continue to degrade by around 22.5% every year. So if a brand finds out that the subscribers are not interested in the content it is best to ask them about their preferences. Sharing questionnaire also helps in understanding customer preferences.  These data are helpful in segmenting email lists and personalizing email campaigns according to their purchase preferences.

2.Consider Double Opt-in

The benefit of utilizing double opt-in is that users need to confirm their subscription to the mailing list. This has two notable advantages

• Brands get permission to send marketing emails to their contacts
• Marketers are assured that there are no email addresses with typos or syntax errors in the email list

Double opt-in requires sending the contacts emails that contain a link. By clicking on it subscribers get to acknowledge their awareness of being part of a email list.

3.Eliminate bounced addresses

Email bounces typically come from a mailing server when an email is not delivered. There are two types soft and hard but both are not able to reach a user. Soft bounces mostly occur due to temporary reasons such as large file size, server downtime, etc. Whereas hard bounces take place because of permanent causes like blocks by recipients, invalid addresses, etc.

4.Re-engagement email campaign

At times when the audience does not like the content of emails the Email Marketing Conversion Rate is likely to decline significantly. So before composing a marketing email marketers must take into account the type of content the target audience is looking for. Sending reengagement emails help provide subscribers with the right kind of content including offers and discounts. Some brands suggest subscribers to pause receiving emails for some time and then start receiving communication a while later.

5.Make unsubscription easy

Brands often make the mistake of making unsubscription complicated. As a result subscribers end up marking emails as spam and it inturn impacts the reputation of the sender.

Through inclusion of easy to find  unsubscription button subscribers will have more trust on the business. Also if the content is relevant and engaging there will be no possibility of unsubscription.

Conclusion

To keep a email list clean it is critical to understand how subscribers are interacting with a brand. If marketers notice that email campaign metrics are not upto the mark then they must consider cleaning the email list. For any business subscribers leaving is not a good sign but high quality email list with the right set of subscribers will result in higher marketing performance, lower expenses, and most importantly does not impact sender reputation. Email tools like ManagePlus are excellent for email list cleaning and ensuring email marketing campaigns offer optimum results.