Without a well-scrubbed email list, all your list management efforts will be for nothing. If you wish to learn how to repair that, learn about our top rules of email hygiene in 2023.
Over 20% of email signups include issues such as misspelled words, syntax mistakes, or missing domains. (source).
This aspect is the single most crucial factor when it comes to targeted email marketing. Clean lists are the foundation for effective segmentation, exceptional click-through rates (CTRs), and lucrative email campaigns.
Hygienic email lists are maintained by routinely checking for and eliminating dead email addresses. But it goes beyond that.
Even just having a valid email address isn’t enough. You’ll also want to ensure that your lists are integrated and that there are no duplicate contacts or other misplaced data.
What are email cleansing and hygiene?
Data is the new oil. One reason is that it’s a company’s most valuable asset. In the heyday of the oil industry, raw crude would be refined into finished goods like gasoline, diesel, and paraffin. You wouldn’t hoard all that oil and money.
The value of data is comparable to that of gold. You may make money from crude oil, but erroneous information is useless.
Eliminating or repairing inaccurate, incomplete, irrelevant, duplicate, or incorrectly structured data is known as “data cleaning” or “data cleansing.” It involves correcting all the information that serves no use for your company.
Email hygiene: Unresponsive recipients
No matter how thorough and precise they are, there will always be one on your contact list who isn’t interested in receiving your emails. That one contact never has and will never open any of your emails. Perhaps everything was filed in a folder they never check, or perhaps they just don’t give a damn.
You must delete these folks from your list consistently. Not only would trying to intrigue those who aren’t interested affect your stats, but it’s also pointless.
You should use your email marketing service to flag subscribers who haven’t engaged with your messages in over 90 days. A re-engagement campaign should be sent out automatically every 90 days. Those who read it will be added to your normal distribution list, while those who ignore it will be deleted.
Clean data is essential for lead management.
You can’t effectively handle these leads unless the data outlined above is complete, well-structured, and correct.
Without initially investing in clean data, a lead generation program will waste the time of each sales representative by 27.3%, or 546 hours per year on average.
Data quality indicators that should prompt action
Maintaining clean inboxes should be a standard operating procedure for any company. There are, however, indicators that the quality of your email data is deteriorating.
Poor percentage of opens
The average click-through rate of an email is 21.33 percent. Dropping open rates might mean a few different things. Low deliverability rates may be related to low open rates. People can’t read your email if they don’t get it.
This might be because your subject lines are weak or your email list is poorly segmented, resulting in a neutral recipient base. You may be sending either too many or too few emails, respectively.
In any event, a steep decline in the open rate indicates a stale mailing list.
Discouragingly few clicks
The CTR of an email campaign measures how many recipients take action by clicking the provided link. This shows that the information in your emails is helpful to the recipients.
Folks aren’t interested in what you have to offer if your click-through rate (CTR) is poor. According to surveys, the average CTR across all sectors is 2.5%.
If it’s far lower than you’d want, you can improve by properly segmenting your list to deliver targeted emails to a smaller group. If your click-through rate (CTR) suddenly drops, something fishy happens with your mailing list. This means it needs to be cleaned.
Low persistency rate
Envision yourself printing a hundred emails, crumpling them into balls, and then throwing them against a box. In other words, a mailbox.
An email with a 20% bounce rate will never reach its target inbox. This scenario’s bounce rate of less than 1% (including hard and soft bounces) indicates poor aim. Email deliverability issues exist if the bounce rate rises beyond 2%. What this indicates is that your inbox is full of outdated emails.
Your sender reputation will take a hit, not only because your subscribers aren’t getting your emails. Email providers like Gmail and Hotmail will be able to observe your bounce rates and may suspect that you are spamming their users. It must be cleaned if your email list has a high bounce rate.
The inboxes are becoming filled with spam.
If your messages are being marked as spam, it’s time to perform list maintenance. Sites like Email Oversight let you see what others think about your IP address. The first thing you must do if you have a spammy reputation is to clear your list. Click here to be redirected to Email Oversight’s website.
