7 Reasons Why You Should Clean Your Email List Regularly
The value of your email list is only as good as its health. One of the most important, regular tasks of any email marketing campaign is to ensure that you perform maintenance on your mailing list. During maintenance, you should be removing any contacts that regularly bounce or aren’t responding to campaigns.
Here are seven reasons to make cleaning your mailing list a regular task.
1. It Saves Costs
The more people you have on your mailing list, the more it will cost you to run it. Normally this is not done on a per subscriber price. For instance, those with 999 subscribers on Fluttermail cost $17 per month, while those with 1001 subscribers cost $29 per month.
Research has found that about half of all subscribers are inactive. Therefore, a simple maintenance task can keep you in lower level pricinhg tiers.
2. It Improves Analysis
There are many reasons why subscribers become inactive. One reason might be because they’ve changed email addresses. If you have emails being sent to an inactive account, then you can’t analyse campaigns accurately because these dead accounts are skewing results.
Removing dead accounts allows you to focus on people who at least semi-regularly open your email campaigns.
3. Gives You Opportunities To Sell
While removing inactive subscribers is important, it shouldn’t be the first thing to do with subscribers who aren’t opening mail. Some people do read subject lines and go straight to your website to make a purchase. Therefore, when identifying those who aren’t responding any more, you should look to create a re-engagement campaign. Research has shown that inactive subscribers are worth about 32% of active subscribers.
This should encourage people to tell you they’re still interested in hearing from you. Those that don’t take any action can then be removed from your list.
4. Find Malicious Emails In Your Subscriber List
It’s important that you find those on your mailing list that are spam or malicious accounts. These email accounts can cause your business real harm. Email addresses within these categories should be removed without question.
Malicious email accounts can often be spotted manually because they don’t have corresponding names with email addresses or weird email addresses (i.e. XtrebleYU@domain.co.uk).
5. You Can Remove Subscribers That Have No Value To You
Sometimes people subscribe to your business’ mailing list who have no value to you. For instance, if you sell only in the US, Canada or another country and you get subscribers from the EU, Russia or another area, then you can remove those subscribers.
Those that aren’t of value to your organisation are just costing you money and skewing your statistics. They’re also getting irrelevant content which won’t help with your reputation.
6. Its Easier To Do It Regularly
When you have thousands of subscribers on your mailing list, if you only check them rarely, then it will take up a lot of your time. Instead, checks done on a regular basis take up less time and allow you to be more responsive to changes.
Regular checks can be scheduled every one to three months. It shouldn’t take any more than a few hours work, but it can save hundreds of dollars a year.
7. It’s Good For Compliance
There are lots of email marketing laws that protect consumers from illicit marketing emails. While subscribers might have signed up, that doesn’t always mean that they want to receive marketing content. They just don’t read the sign-up details properly. In addition, some subscribers might try to unsubscribe from your mailing list, but don’t complete the process.
By regularly scheduling in maintenance for your mailing list, you can remove people who have no interest in your marketing content and comply with legal requirements.
Conclusion
Maintaining your email marketing list is really important. It can help your business to be more effective in marketing, finances and compliance. Therefore, you should always be looking at doing maintenance every one to three months.
When was the last time you completed maintenance on your email list? When do you next plan to do this?
Let us know in the comments below.
Image via Pixabay.
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Why You Need To Make It Easy For Your Subscribers To Unsubscribe
No marketer wants to think about unsubscribers. After all, a person removing themselves off the mailing list is a lost opportunity for a sale and spread word about the brand. However, there will always be subscribers who want to leave your mailing list.
When, not if, they want to unsubscribe, you will have to be prepared and make it as easy for the subscriber as it is for yourself. There shouldn’t be any lengthy process nor should the subscriber have to jump through hoops.
But why is this the case and what makes a subscriber want to leave your mailing list?
Why Would A Subscriber Want To Leave Your List?
There are numerous reasons why a subscriber might want to leave your mailing list. Here are the main reasons:
- They are no longer interested in your products: There are several reasons why this might be. They might not have the funds anymore or their priorities have changed. Alternatively, they have bought your product or a similar one from a competitor. There is no way to tell the true reason for this as these de-listings will happen sporadically.
- They think you are sending too many emails: This is when you send too many emails to your list and annoy them.
- They don’t remember subscribing to your list: This happens when you haven’t sent an email for a long time. Therefore, while it is important not to communicate too often; you should also ensure you keep in contact regularly enough that they remember who you are.
- Your content is not relevant: If you are not providing them with valuable content they can use, then they are likely to leave your list. In this case, you must adjust your strategy to provide something of worth.
In many of the cases you might not realise why they have left your list. However, if you’ve changed tactics recently, this can be a good indicator. Ensure that when you are adjusting campaigns that you check for changes in your standard statistics. For comparison, your email unsubscribe rate should be roughly 0.5% to meet industry standards.
How Can You Make It Easy For Your Subscribers?
There are several options to make it easy for your subscribers to leave your mailing list. The first is by stating that they could email you a request to be taken off the list. However, there are certain problems with this option. Namely that requests might be missed (i.e. sent to the spam folder) or lost and it requires effort on the subscriber’s behalf.
The second option is for them to go onto your website and fill in a form to remove themselves from your list. This is better because the form is less likely to go missing. However, there will still be work for the subscriber to do.
The final option is to have an unsubscribe button in your email messages that automatically completes the action. For most businesses, this is the preferred method.
Why Should You Make It Easy For Subscribers To Leave?
There are numerous reasons why you should make the unsubscription process easy. Firstly, and the most important reason, is that many nations enforce laws where it is required to make unsubscription easy. For instance, in the US the regulation is within the CAN-SPAM legislation. In the United Kingdom it is a series of marketing acts.
Breaking these laws can result in a large fine, which would make it hard to justify using email as a sustainable marketing avenue.
In addition, unsubscribers, while no longer financial productive, are still work. If you made the task difficult, it is likely you would have to do some manual operation to remove them from the list. And this would cost you money indirectly.
On the other hand, by using an automated system you don’t have any hard work and there is no chance a request has been missed. This leaves you free to concentrate on those who are engaged with your content.
Conclusion
There are two main reasons why unsubscribing from your list should be made easy. Firstly it is to comply with email marketing laws across the world. The second is to make it easier for you to manage; leaving you with more time to concentrate on those who do want to receive your messages.
Action Steps:
- Insert an unsubscribe button on your email marketing content.
How do you manage your unsubscribers? Have you had any problems in the past?
Let us know in the comments below.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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