Why email list hygiene is CRITICAL for your email campaigns to show results?

The answer is simple because it can make or break your email marketing.

Email hygiene is the regular activity which entails cleaning out inactive (cold) email subscribers from your future email marketing campaigns and keeping your remaining list warm with healthy email sending habits. Performing email hygiene regularly will ensure you are only emailing the people who truly want your messages—which also helps you avoid your email being marked as spam.

Actually it’s a game of the providers who monitor EVERY email you are sending in a campaign. The Email service providers (ESPs) have upped their game and have become smarter and more attuned to what recipients want to receive in their inbox. This means a clean list is a must when it comes to getting your emails delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes.

ESPs are digging in deep to the emails you’re sending and the engagement recipients are having with those messages.

Beyond monitoring spam complaints, ESPs are calculating opens, clicks, unsubscribes, inactivity and more into the algorithms that decide inbox placement. Once a recipient opts into your content, it is extremely important for you to monitor and track behavior over time. Permission to send emails does not last forever, even the most engaged subscribers can lose interest as time passes, which can mean they become more of a liability than an asset.

Where does that leave the list of people your business has accrued over the last several years?

You need a plan, and a solid one at that to keep your prospects engaged, else your reputation is at stake.  You need to embark upon an email list cleaning exercise.

So whats an email cleaning exercise?

Your first step to proper email list hygiene is to make sure that you are working with a list of email subscribers who really want your messages. It’s easier to drive conversions and engagement with clients who are excited to be in your ecosystem. There are several ways to achieve that, but the most promising one is to use a Re-engagement campaign.

Send a re-engagement email that takes one of the following approaches (if you have any CRM of repute, this is a standard campaign they provide abnitio – in this instance Infusionsoft by Keap provides just that):

• Asks people who have opened your email in the last six months to click a link and confirm they still want to be on your list
• Gives list members different subscription options, such as receiving every email or signing up for a digest
• Confirms that their email address is still current and that they don’t want to update their email preferences

The next step is to keep the engagement going. This is critical for the sanctity of your beloved list. Once you’ve re-engaged your subscribers, you must commit to maintaining your list going forward, and implement a list hygiene plan so leads never go cold again.

Decide what you can reasonably commit to, and then establish that as the basis of your email strategy. Will you send content daily, weekly, or monthly?

Use your business knowledge/experience on what subscribers really want, and come up with a schedule of content that’s laser-targeted to your audience.

• Write long form, high-value content your readers will love
• Experiment with video
• Curate the best information in your industry
• Offer subscribers exclusive discounts

Deliver value again and again on a regular schedule until your readers look forward to receiving your emails.

Email messaging is for the long haul. If your email list is currently without a pulse, don’t waste another minute. Assess what’s gone wrong, engage, find out how you can provide value, and then be relentless in your pursuit of building (or re-building) these critical client relationships.

Engaging smartly with your list can turn your email into a highly profitable client channel for the long run.

If you ever hit a road block, reach out to us at Unokha and we can help you take the next step. Actually we can clean it up for you.