Keeping a regular check on your email marketing metrics and most importantly, maintaining email list hygiene should be your top priority to improve the impact of your email campaigns and target the right kind of people. In simple terms, email hygiene means sending the right emails to the right people
What Is Email List Hygiene?
Email list hygiene is a process where you remove the inactive, bounced, and other non-engaging email addresses from your email list.
Email list hygiene will help you:
- Improving your sender reputation
- Higher engagement rates
- Minimize the chances of landing on an email spam list
What Is The Need For Email List Hygiene?
Categorizing your email lists periodically will allow you to send targeted emails to your list and get better engagement and results.
Personalizing not just by adding the customer’s name, but by sending recommendations and content that is relevant to his or her journey will also build your relationship and establish trust with your customers.
Sender reputation is usually judged by email open rates, click rates, better engagement, the number of invalid email addresses on the list, etc. which is why email list hygiene is essential.
Cleaning your email list will increase the returns on your email marketing efforts. So let’s talk about the best practices you need to follow to truly take care of your email list hygiene.
Email List Hygiene Best Practices That You Must Follow
Delete All Inactive Subscribers
If you have many subscribers who are not active on your list – maybe they haven’t opened your emails in a long time or haven’t clicked any of your links in the email – it is time to say goodbye to them.
Subscribers can go inactive for several reasons, including:
- Content is not relevant to the reader
- Not sending enough emails
- There was no value-added
- Your email didn’t stand out
Segment Your Subscriber List
An alternative to the above point is to segment your list. If a subscriber is inactive for a while, move them to another list in which you can send good discounts and offers. You can also try reducing the number of emails you send every month to this inactive list.
Delete Role Accounts
Role accounts are the emails that represent an alias like–think @support, @info, etc. These emails do not represent individuals and, as a result, are not checked or opened very often.
Delete Invalid and Bounced Emails
Many ESPs automatically removes the hard bounces after two tries–and this is a good thing. Continuously emailing invalid email addresses can have a negative impact on your metrics, especially your delivery rates.
Confirm Email Subscriptions
Providing a double opt-in method is the best way to ensure that the subscriber truly wants your email. Double opt-in signup requires the subscriber to enter their email on your signup form, and then to confirm once more. Double opt-in is worth it for both the sender and recipient because it automatically helps purge bad email addresses from your list immediately.
Conclusion
Cleaning your email list on a regular basis will prove to be an effective lever for improving your email engagement, sender reputation, and resulting deliverability rates.
