Email List Management Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
It allows you to get more finely-tuned messages into the hands of a more well-segmented audience. In short, it gets you to the point where you’re only sending emails that are relevant to the interests of that particular subscriber – the ideal message, for the right person, at the right time.
An integrated marketing automation and CRM can help with this, since your marketing automation solution will pull information about your customers from your CRM, and use it to build targeted lists.
Better targeting and segmentation enable you to build better relationships with your customers and prospects, who will come to trust and respect you more as they begin to feel you understand them better. You’ll start to see a higher ROI on all the emails you send, not to mention a decrease in unsubscribes and spam complaints.
There are a lot of ways to build your email list, but the most common is offering an incentive, such as a coupon or a piece of content, in exchange for the prospect’s name and email address. Permission-based marketing means that your prospects, leads, and clients have directly granted you (or your company) permission to market to them, and requesting a prospect’s email address and permission to market to them is the first step in ensuring your marketing is permission-based. In marketing terms, this means they have “opted-in” to your marketing list. Opt-ins come in a variety of formats: filling out a form on your website, filling out a form in person at your business, or having a conversation with a prospect in person or on the phone.
Permissions are critical: marketing to someone who has not opted-in can get you in trouble with your email marketing vendor, internet service provider, or jeopardize your compliance with anti-spam laws. Even if matters don’t escalate to that level, no one likes to receive emails they didn’t sign up for, and you don’t want to risk alienating a potential client.
Another email list management best practice is to provide a means of unsubscribing from your list. This is required by law in some countries, but also helps prevent former subscribers from marking your email as spam. An “unsubscribe here” link should be provided in the footer of your emails, and most marketing automation vendors provide functionality to make it easy to add.
When you have multiple lists that you manage – such as your newsletter mailing list, new event announcements list, and loyalty perks list – a prospect may choose to remain on one list while unsubscribing from another. Subscription management offers a way for individuals to select which emails they’d like to receive by providing them a choice to opt-in to some lists and opt-out of others. Instead of a single “unsubscribe” link, the person is directed to a web page where they can select the lists they’d like to receive.
Purchased Marketing Lists
It may be tempting to purchase a list of email addresses from a third-party; however, many of these lists are not reliable, and the recipients on the list have not opted-in to receive your emails. Third-party lists are often purposely seeded by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with fake email addresses whose only purpose is to catch spammers. Third-party lists also frequently contain out-of-date email addresses that will cause your bounce rate to go up. In fact, many email marketing automation providers don’t permit the use of third-party lists at all, whether purchased, rented, or borrowed.
Maintaining Active, Engaged Lists
As a business owner, few things are more frustrating than investing time and effort in a new program that doesn’t succeed. An example from the email marketing world is an email newsletter campaign that generates a high number of bounces or spam complaints, rather than the intended opens and click-throughs. Keeping “clean” lists – lists of active, engaged, opted-in subscribers – is a critical step towards successful email list management.
Follow these five steps to maintain a clean email list:
Build the List from Scratch
We’ve already shared the dangers of purchased lists, but it bears repeating: purchased lists are likely a waste of time and effort, with the potential for massive downsides, both practical (high unsubscribes and bounce rates with very low open rates) and legal (CAN-SPAM violations). Including only email addresses provided to you freely ensures the subscriber is interested in what your business has to offer. These subscribers are unlikely to provide invalid email addresses or to mark your messages as spam, since they have opted-in to receive your content.
Monitor Excluded Emails and Email Events
Every time you send an email to a list, be sure to take a look at the excluded emails and email events, particularly the bounce events. Excluded emails are email addresses that were not sent to due to excessive past bounces.
You should seriously consider removing these email addresses from your marketing list. If the email address has been excluded, the recipient did not get the email. It is good to periodically remove these people from your marketing list so the number of people you think will receive the email will be much closer to the number of people that actually receive the email.
Remove Fake, Invalid, and “Spam Trap” Email Addresses
Keeping up with the excluded emails and email events is a good way to catch fake or misspelled email addresses. “Spam trap” email addresses are valid email addresses that are created for the sole purpose of luring spam. While most of these email addresses end up on purchased third-party marketing lists (as an easy tool to catch senders of unsolicited emails), it is not unheard of for someone to submit a spam trap email address maliciously. Some examples of spam trap addresses include [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc.
While there isn’t a catchall for identifying these kinds of addresses, it’s always good to keep an eye out any time you look through your marketing lists. You can also delete email addresses that are obviously misspelled, such as [email protected] or [email protected].
While it may not seem like it, role accounts such as [email protected] often have a negative impact on email campaigns. These email addresses are often checked by multiple people and may change hands frequently. Even if collected legitimately, these types of email addresses are more likely to become a source of spam complaints. During your email list management process, you may want to consider removing these types of emails.
Prompt Customers to Update Information and Provide Subscription Options
Consider regularly prompting your customers to update their personal information and subscription preferences. If customers are aware that they have the option to stop receiving your messages and are consistently presented with the opportunity to provide a new email address, it is likely that each person on your marketing list has given you a current email address and is on that list because they have chosen to be. This can be as simple as including a link to a form or subscription management page in your marketing, or sending a quarterly or biannual email prompt to update information.
Email list management and maintaining a clean list is an ongoing process, but with the above steps you should be able to increase your delivery rate by weeding out harmful and unnecessary list members.
Advanced Email List Management
Beyond keeping the list clean from a data point of view, it’s also a good idea to periodically evaluate the quality of your list from a sales and marketing perspective.
While reviewing your marketing lists, ask these questions:
When was the Lead Created?
If the “created on” date is more than one year ago, and the lead hasn’t been converted, perhaps they should be disqualified. There’s also a good chance that the contact info for that person is out-of-date.
What was the Lead Source?
Evaluate your lead sources continually so you know what drives the best conversion rates. Dig into your CRM data, especially opportunities, and find out where your best leads are coming from. You might find that your best leads come through referrals, and your worst come through trade shows.
How Complete is Your Data?
This one is harder to analyze, but it can give you some good insight. If you’ve got old, cold leads that have only ever given you an email address, chances are they’re not as qualified as leads where you have a full name and phone number.
Re-Engaging Old or Cold Leads
After you’ve scrubbed your list, you may decide that some leads or contacts deserve one last chance. If you have good quality leads that have opted into your mailings in the past but have just gone cold, a good email list management tactics is to consider a re-engagement campaign. These are most effective when you use a little trial and error to refine your messaging. Try sending an email with a subject line like, “We haven’t heard from you in a while” or “We’d like to re-connect.” You could also try to regenerate interest through a promotion or discount.
What are your top tips for email list management? Let us know in the comments! If you want to learn more about how make email marketing more profitable for your small business, check out this eBook, Email Marketing that Works for Small Business.
Article From: blog.automational.com
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
areudirty
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner