Top 5 Reasons You Should Clean That Email List
Does it matter to clean that email list before you send that next campaign? Is it that important? The quality of your email list matters a lot as sending emails to a less quality list might lead to your email platform penalizing you.
The next question you probably might want to ask is what makes an email list less qualified? Whether it’s a list gotten organically or purchased, the truth is these lists become stale with time and this list will do you a lot of harm than good.
Below are top 5 reasons you should clean that email list before sending your next campaign.
Your reputation
Just as said earlier, these email lists become stale with time and the rate this stale runs might leave your cheeks dropped. A research reveals that 25% of your email lists will expire as your readers change jobs, hobbies, or perhaps unsubscribe from your newsletters.
Just in case you are thinking of sending to email lists you got last year like the above statistics reveals, 25% of it has expired. And sending to the lists you got 3 to 4 years ago is like a waste of time and resources. The ISPs observe the way your lists are being engaged every time because that is exactly what they like to see. It’s simple and straightforward, a list of high-quality subscribers means your newsletters are likely to be delivered to their inbox instead of their spam folder.
Your sender score matters a lot and this sender score can be ruined by users that are not responsive, users who get your newsletters in their spam folders and complainers. The negative effect of this sender score being ruined is not limited to your emails landing in the junk folder, but will also put it in the junk folders of potential users that love your newsletters and you may end being blacklisted. List cleaning is very crucial as sending emails to bad email addresses can harm your reputation.
Revenue
There is a difference between sending email and sending snail email, the difference is the former costs less. The more subscribers you have, the higher the price for sending them emails. Juxtaposing the pricing plans of Aweber and MailChimp, these two ESPs charge according to the number of your subscribers. For instance, MailChimp unlimited emails charge $10 for 0-500 subscribers per month while Aweber charges $19 for 0-500 subscribers. MailChimp charges $15 for 501-1,000 subscribers, $20 for 1,001 subscribers etc. while Aweber charges $29 for 501-2500 per month etc.
These pricing plans are exactly why you need list cleaning to save your resources. By removing inactive and unresponsive users, complainers and those who do not bring in any income for your business, it brings down your lists to active lists and as well pricing plans. A survey carried out by Clickmail reveals that 91% of companies feel they wasted a percentage of their marketing budgets due to lack of accuracy in customer contact data
You wouldn’t want to join the league of companies that waste their marketing budgets that is why you need list cleaning to reduce your monthly ESP budgets.
Retarget your campaigns
Success is moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Another great thing cleaning your email list helps you achieve is classifying your list into engaged and unengaged contacts. It’s not advisable to always send email to users that are not active but it advisable to monitor them – this will be easy as they have been classified. If this is done right, it can make you money at the end of the day reason being these users were at a time loyal to you or your business. In fact, engaging with old clients is easy compared to getting or engaging with new customers. According to Invespcro, it is five times more expensive to attract or engage with a new customer than keep an existing customer.
If you still remember why list become stale, it does not revolve around you. It could be they have a new job or email address. Then when this happens what’s the next thing to do? It’s a possibility that they might not use the email account again but it’s also possible that you have the contact data of your old customers. A little research can be carried out either on social media or quick Google search maybe they can be discovered there. Who knows!
In addition, verifying or cleaning your email list will allow you to have a proper understanding of what offers to send. For instance, you will only send re-engagement offers, coupon codes to disengaged or inactive users. These re-engagement offers will convert very well if they are not users who will get it in their spam folders, complainers or bad email addresses.
A/B test strategy
This is a strategy that helps you to discover the best email marketing strategy you can use for your business. For instance, you sent emails to two different groups, A and B, there will definitely be a difference between the two group which could be the level of conversion, engagement or performance level which will help you to know the group to capitalize on.
This strategy can be used to find out the perfect techniques to apply when sending your campaigns. This strategy is also believed to be a marketing investment with a good return on investment (ROI). However, for this method to be effective it is expected to have a clean email list – active users or account.
While many think having a clean list or verified email does not matter, it matters because it encourages email segmentation and a survey reveals that marketers who segment their email lists – which just only 11% do, tend to increase conversion rates up to 335% and as well the revenues by 781%.
Users who happen to be in the segment have common interest than you ever imagined. For example, it’s possible they might have at a particular time downloaded a lead magnet promoted by you years back; this means this segment is dirtier than the general list and the users in this group might be high-value customers. Verify users in your list and then you can try out A/B test strategy perfectly.
List cleaning
This does not need much explanation, it’s self-explanatory. With just a few dollars you have your email verified or cleaned, all that is required of you is just to upload your list and wait for the final cleaned list.
If your list is not a big one you can do this one by one with some free tools but just in a case it’s a big one it’s advisable to pay a little fee to save your time and also to have increased accuracy.
Is it compulsory to clean your list?
You probably have been waiting to ask that. Yes! Your number of unsubscribes, undelivered messages and much more are monitored by ISPs and you will be fined once you cross the threshold.
Some of these ESPs like MailChimp and Aweber will not hinder you from sending to bad address and you will get fined for this later.
This is why you need an email validator whether paid or free depending on your capacity. An example is emaillistvalidation.com which allows you to verify 1000 email addresses at no cost. For you to enjoy and have improved campaign results, ensure you clean your list before you blast that next campaign.