One of the very best ways to reach your customers is still through email, no matter what you may have heard. In fact, in the past four years, customer acquisition via email has increased more than four times.
However, email is not the best way to reach people that don’t want to hear what you have to say. A bad email list won’t just put your marketing efforts on the rocks, it can actually undermine your entire business. If you do not take the time to clean your email list on a regular basis to ensure that each person on your list actually wants to hear from you, the following will likely happen:
- People will begin to delete, ignore or mark the emails you send as spam.
- Your sender score reputation will be reduced.
- The open and click through rates will fall.
- The rate of unsubscribes will increase.
Since you likely do not want any of these things to occur, you need to learn how to turn a bad email list into a good one.
Characteristics of a Bad Email List
If you have aggressive goals, the option to acquire an email list quickly can be tempting. However, sending out emails to those that do not have a relationship with your business can be extremely damaging to your business. The characteristics of a bad email list include the following:
- It was borrowed, rented or purchased.
- It has a high bounce rate.
- It is an old or outdated list.
Characteristics of a Good Email List
When you create a good email list, you will be reaching people that are interested in what you have to say and that have a much higher likelihood to convert. The characteristics of a good email list include the following:
- It is entirely permission based.
- It is full of recent and regular emailings.
- It has an organic origin and organic growth.
Tips to Turn a Bad List into a Good List
There are a few specific things you can do to take a bad list and transform it into a good list.
Separate by Email Address Age
When you segment your list by the amount of time a person has been in your database, you can prioritize it by sending emails to your contacts while they are still new and fresh.
Create a Strategy for Visitors to Opt-In
An opt-in strategy will allow potential customers to subscribe to your emails by choice, which will help to increase the quality of your list over time. In order to do this, you must first create original and helpful content that your target audience is going to like to read. The next step will be to find ways to ask people to subscribe to your emails.
Create a Campaign for Re-Engagement
You should remove any email addresses that have not engaged with your emails in several years and then work to reinvigorate the remainder of your list with re-engagement efforts. The best way to do this is by creating an opt-in message that provides readers with the choice to opt into future emails or be removed from the list after that particular mailing.
Being able to identify a bad email list from a good email list is essential for the health of your marketing campaign, as well as your business. Using the tips here will help you develop a method of cleaning your list that will turn even the worst email lists into viable and effective ones.
