You have collected a list of email addresses, and you’re now ready to start mailing. Or so you think.
Before you hurry to the finish line and hit “send,” there are some questions you need to consider to avoid issues with your Email Service Provider or getting marked as spam by major ISPs. By starting at the top of the flow chart and working your way down, you can see if you’re truly ready to go ahead.
So, where have you landed?
1. Abandon your list entirely!
If you’ve created a master email list by buying various lists from brokers, it can lead to many hard bounces, spam complaints, and unsubscribes. What you’re getting is not a “clean, verified, opt-in list” as promised. Instead, you’re getting a big problem with outdated co-reg email data from 2007. Don’t ignore the harm that purchased lists can cause to your email deliverability and sender reputation. The bottom line is, if you didn’t gather these email addresses yourself, you shouldn’t be emailing them. Also, many ESPs consider it a violation of their terms to send to purchased lists. Start gathering your own opt-in email addresses through website forms, newsletter sign-ups, offline events, and trade shows.
2. Clean and validate your list today!
If you have landed here, don’t fret. It means that you have taken the necessary precautions by asking these recipients their permission to be notified of your offers. However, in the process of sending to these recipients, you may have come across quite a few hard bounces or outdated contacts that have caused you to be temporarily shut down by your ESP. Before you mail to this list in the future, you must make a small investment in an email list cleaning & validation service to purge bad, dead, invalid, undeliverable, duplicate, and BOT emails from your database. You have not only taken action to safeguard your sender reputation, but you are also reducing your overall marketing costs due to bouncing emails.
3. You’re ready to begin mailing!
If you have built an email list from scratch and mail to your list frequently with little to no bounces, complainers, or unsubscribes, you’re in the clear and can start your email campaign right away. Just remember that over an annual period, approximately 30% of all email addresses become inactive, unused, or abandoned. As long as you continuously re-engage with your subscribers on occasion and remove unsubscribes and complainers as you receive them, you are maximizing the deliverability and performance of your email campaign.
Your best money maker is in your email list, whether you know it or not. Updating and cleaning up your email list regularly makes all of the difference.