If you own a business, you are well aware of the value of a good mailing list.
It allows you to connect with potential and existing customers and can help you drive a significant amount of traffic to your website. It also allows you to market to individuals who have already expressed an interest in your products or services.
That being said, in order to maximize your efforts, keeping this list up to date is crucial. But why is this so important? And what can you do to make your list as specific as possible?
What is email cleanup?
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Email cleanup refers to the practice of removing from your mailing list all addresses that belong to contacts who are not responding or who no longer use that email as a point of contact.
The reason you want to do this on a regular basis is that if you send communications exclusively to people who want to hear from you, you will increase your open and click-through rates, thereby improving the quality of your leads and ultimately resulting in a drop-in rate. higher conversion.
Another equally important reason is that if you send marketing emails to too many bogus or closed accounts, they will be returned to you as undeliverable and increase your risk of being flagged as a spammer. As a result, your emails could end up in the junk mailbox of most recipients without being seen.
Warning signs It’s time to clean up your mailing list
OK. So, only sending communications to people who want to receive them makes a lot of sense. But how do you know when it’s time to clean up your mailing list in the first place?
Keep an eye out for these indicators:
You’ve noticed a drop in open and click-through rates.
When you check your marketing analytics, you’ll be able to see both the open and click-through rates of your marketing emails. If you notice a downward trend in engagement, it’s time to remove these contacts from your email list.
Otherwise, you’re wasting time and money marketing to people who don’t want to hear from you. On average, you want an open rate of around 20%, although this can vary depending on your industry.
Your unsubscribed list grows.
This could be because you email them too often, the content isn’t relevant to them, or they initially signed up just to get a discount code for a one-time purchase. Whatever the reason, don’t take it personally.
However, take this opportunity to find out what you can do to keep your audience interested. Take the time to do your research – watch social media groups, discussion forums, or ask for feedback directly.
You have received too many subscriber complaints.
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Your analytics tools also let you know the number of subscribers who have flagged your emails as spam. This can happen for a number of different reasons: maybe they can’t remember signing up for your mailing list, or they think you are sending too many emails.
Either way, the reason this is a problem is that if too many people using the same server (such as Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, etc.) report you, the email provider will start to send your communications to other contacts directly to their junk mail folders.
Your emails have a high bounce rate.
Your email bounce rate refers to the number of communications that were not received by your recipient. This can happen because the email address is misspelled, the email is too large, the recipient’s inbox is full, their account has been deleted, or the recipient has blocked you.
And just like when people flag you as spam, a high bounce rate will increase the risk that all of your communications end up in other people’s spam folders.
How often should you clean your mailing list?
As a rule of thumb, if an email subscriber hasn’t been engaged in the past six months or so, it’s time to remove them from your mailing list. Therefore, twice a year is a good time to schedule your email cleanup.
However, if you notice any of the signs listed above more often, you might benefit from having it done quarterly.
How to clean up your mailing list
There are several steps to cleaning up your mailing list.
1. Segment your contacts between active and inactive.
Anyone who hasn’t been interested in your emails in the past few months is not interested in your marketing efforts. Most software platforms and CRM programs allow you to segment contacts based on desired characteristics.
2. Check for hard and soft rebounds.
Software bounces refers to emails that could not be delivered due to temporary issues, such as an inbox full, communication was too important, or the server was down.
On the other hand, hard bounces refer to emails that were not delivered due to sender blocking or an email address that no longer exists. You only want to remove it from your mailing list.
3. Remove unsubscribed from your contacts.
Make it easy to unsubscribe your contacts from your mailing list. No connection, no confirmation request.
However, include either a short multiple choice exit poll or a comment box for them to state their reason. You can use this information later to keep your future contacts.
4. Run inactive emails through cleaning software.
There are several mailing list cleaners (see below) that will filter out misspelled and bogus email addresses. You will then be left with a list of valid email addresses to which you can send a re-engagement campaign.
5. Try to re-engage inactive contacts.
Do market research to identify ways to entice former customers to reconnect with you, such as offering them special offers, a discount code, or product recommendations that are particularly relevant to them.
10 of the best mailing list cleaner software
1. ZeroBounce
ZeroBounce lets you see bounced emails, open rates, click-through rates, and emails flagged as spam in real time. Its application programming interface (API) also analyzes every email address entered by customers to eliminate fake email addresses, ensuring more accurate metrics.
2. ListWise
ListWise removes duplicate email addresses and fixes obvious typos to reduce bounce rates. This reduces the likelihood that your mail servers will be blacklisted (i.e. flagged as spam) for sending too many communications to non-existent email addresses.
3. Hunter
Hunter’s Email Verifier allows you to upload your mailing list file to separate real from fake email addresses. And if you’re just starting to build a mailing list and don’t have too many contacts, you can get 50 free checks per month.
4. ReachMail
ReachMail offers customized solutions based on your business size and email volume, and offers support for multiple brands. They also provide simple marketing services for non-professionals which include drag and drop message builder.
5. EmailListCheck
EmailListVerify detects bad emails before they end up in your database, integrates well with a long list of email marketing platforms, and offers flexible pricing options, often at premium rates. lower than other companies, depending on the size of your database.
6. Never bounce
NeverBounce provides a proprietary email cleanup process that checks every email address from major vendors around the world. It then provides metrics that are easy to understand, simple to segment and download without having to transfer them to an Excel sheet or other type of software.
7. Data validation
DataValidation has a user-friendly interface that allows you to create an account, upload your mailing list (or sync contacts from your email account), and get a free report. They guarantee a 99% deliverability rate, are GDPR compliant and offer 24/7 customer support.
8. No rebound
In addition to removing bogus and inactive email addresses, Bounceless also cleans your mailing list of contacts that match a database of complainants. They also offer free credits to potential customers to try out their service before committing to it.
9. Straw
Pabbly is a sales and marketing platform that offers multiple tools: form builders, subscription billing, email marketing, and email cleanup. Although their email verification process is slower (24 hours compared to the usual minutes on other platforms), they claim to provide the most accurate results.
10. Quick email check
QuickEmailVerification provides the same services as other software. However, they also offer a free tier for businesses with smaller mailing lists, which makes it ideal for startups. They also offer volume discounts for businesses with large listings and extensive campaigns.
Keep email data accurate for continuous results
By keeping accurate customer data in your CRM, you are able to maximize all of your marketing and sales efforts. Clean data prepares you for continued success in your email marketing and lead nurturing so you can achieve your business goals.
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