One area in which email marketing experts are in agreement
is the importance of maintaining a clean email list. As Dan Forootan relates,
keeping your list clean, without duplications and incorrect or out-of-date
information, "is imperative to having an effective email marketing
strategy."
Following are 10 email list cleaning tips from leading email
marketing experts from around the web:
Remove Undeliverable Addresses—With ISPs and email services
more closely monitoring traffic, invalid and outdated email addresses threaten
your reputation and waste resources. Use an email delivery service to
accurately capture email bounces, and make sure it’s configured to stop mailing
hard bounces immediately and remove soft bounces after a few attempts. An email
validation service is also an effective way to remove bad emails, and it avoids
the risk of damaging your IP addresses and mailing reputation.
Eliminate Unsubscribes—Mailing to people who have
unsubscribed can get your emails sent to spam folders and arouse spam complaints
that negatively affect your reputation. While the CAN-SPAM act allows 10 days
to respond to an unsubscribe request, you should honor the request immediately.
Suppress Spam Traps—Spam traps are decoy email addresses
that are used by blacklists and ISPs to catch spammers. If they get on your
list and you send mail to them, your email sender reputation and your ability
to get email delivered will take a definite hit. To avoid looking like
spammers, experts like Sandeep Vadgama recommend monitoring your reputation and
practicing good list hygiene.
Reinvigorate or Remove Inactive Subscribers—Inactive
subscribers can drain your resources and threaten your reputation. Try to
reengage inactive users through reactivation campaigns, and reclaim as many inactive
addresses as possible through an Email Change of Address (ECOA) service. If
after a reasonable period of time the members continue to be unresponsive,
eliminate their addresses.
Optimize Your Data Capture Process—As Spencer Kollas
advises, "List hygiene starts with collecting good data." Start by
providing well-designed forms with double data-entry fields for addresses.
Employing real-time email verification services will enable you to verify and
correct data in real time as it is entered on your website and before it gets
on your list.
Just how clean is your data? Identify where your data requires attention, allowing you to choose which areas to improve.
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Segment Your List—Profiling, segmenting, and targeting
prospects and customers according to their interests and product preferences
typically yields superior results. As Eric Groves notes, "This way,
they're only getting information about the products they use." Profiling
can be done by monitoring behavior, examining data, and through surveys. You
also can acquire valuable data about prospects and customers via demographic
append services.
Reconfirm Subscribers—A number of email experts advise
marketers to ask list members to reconfirm their subscriptions. Carrie Hill
advises drafting a blast of list members thanking them for participating and
asking them to reconfirm their desire to continue receiving emails. This tactic
will greatly reduce the size of your list, and is best suited for organizations
with severe delivery problems.
Use Intelligence. Tools and services are available to help
you track spam complaints and monitor the paths and open rates of your emails.
Also, as Spencer Kallas counsels, you can maximize your inbox delivery by
signing up for white lists and feedback loops offered by ISPs and other
providers.
Audit and Consolidate—For marketing databases that are fed
from multiple sources—such as corporate web site, point-of-sale systems,
e-commerce platform, social networks, and mobile promotions—Jim Davidson of
Multichannel Merchant advises examining, consolidating, and cleaning the datato optimize your marketing efforts.
Practice Regular List Hygiene—As Silverpop and other email
marketing authorities relate, the secret of the top email marketers is list
hygiene. In this vein, Spencer Kollas advises you to, "Scrub your lists
regularly."
Article From: www.towerdata.com
