I have seen some heartbroken clients after they found out their awesome email marketing campaign for their band’s next tour never even hit the inbox of their subscribers because of poor list hygiene. This is a costly and potentially damaging situation for your email marketing efforts. As email marketers, we worry about the design of the email, the content, the subject line, reaching the inbox, engaging subscribers, conversion and of course, list growth. It is important to also remember that every fan/subscriber is not created equally; more does not necessary mean better. To create the most engaged and valuable subscriber base, make sure to add list hygiene to your marketing mix. It will save you time, effort, money and increase conversion.

What do you mean, list hygiene?

List hygiene is the process of maintaining an e-mail subscriber list. List hygiene includes taking care of unsubscribe requests, removing e-mail addresses that bounce, updating user e-mail addresses and removing known spam addresses and mis-typed emails. Maintaining an accurate and up to date list has plenty of benefits!

1. Land in the Inbox Every Time- having an outdated list can result in high unsubscribes, low engagement and increase spam complaints. People change their addresses, mistype it on opt-in, and ESPs can place spam traps to make sure you are sending to accurate addresses. By keeping your list current, you will maintain a good sender reputation. Outdated lists on the other hand will damage your sender reputation, can cause your IP address to be blocked and your emails to be undelivered or delivered to the spam box. yikes!

2. Increased Engagement- Bigger is not better! It is much better to have a small list of subscribers who want to read, click and buy than a huge list with only a small portion of subscribers who want to read, click and buy. By shedding users who have no clicked or converted in the past year will  save you time and increase your ROI.

3.Good Sender Reputation- A sender reputation is the most important thing an email marketer needs to be aware of and maintain. If a sender reputation is bad, it can mean that your campaigns will not be delivered or delivered to the spam box.

4. Increased ROI- Paying for emails that never hit the inbox (bounced emails and emails that hit the spam box) will reduce your return on investment.With a clean list you can avoid un-needed marketing costs.

5. Saved Time and $$- With a clean list of  engaged subscribers, you know the campaign you spent half of last week on will hit the inbox and your engaged subscribers will convert.

6.Low Spam Complaints – If you only send to people who want to be on your list and you send them content based on their preferences, interests and permission. I can guarantee they aren’t hitting the spam button. They are hitting the ‘like’ button and ‘follow’ button instead.

When to Remove  Subscribers?

List hygiene should be monitored with your tracking after each send. Which emails bounced? Who unsubscribed? Who clicked/ engaged? Who converted? etc. Make sure to changed the status of your subscribers to ‘unsubscribed’ so you don’t send to these people in the future on accident.  Here are some guidelines to help:

Hard Bounces- after each send, make sure you unsubscribe them from your list

Soft Bounces- This is personal preference. It takes 3 soft bounces before it becomes a hard bounce. I remove at 2.

Un-engaged Subscribers- No clicks, opens, or conversion in 6 months.

Don’t be scared to lose numbers on your lists. Quality over quantity is important for your pocket book, sender reputation and marketing success. So say good-bye to all the dead weight on your list and focus on obtaining more quality engaged subscribers.

Check out this awesome, free tool that will tell you your sender score. Need help improving your deliverability, increasing your engaged subscribers or list hygiene, hit us up or check out the services we offer!