EMAIL DELIVERABILITY: WHAT YOU MUST KNOW PT. 3

Another area that will cause problems lies in poor list hygiene.

What is list hygiene?

It’s the practice of cleaning out subscribers who cause more harm than good to your list health. You should clean your list at least once a year.

What things signal a need for list cleaning?

If you notice negative changes (when you are sending valuable emails) like increased unsubscribes, decreased open rates, a drop in click-through rates, and increased spam complaints, you probably need to clean your list.

So what affects list health?

List building. If you have purchased your list, this is a hard stop. You need to build a list of people who want to be subscribed. People on a purchased list are not going to interact with your emails. Additionally, these lists often have spam trap email addresses in them for the express intent of trapping list purchasers. A spam trap is an email address owned by an ISP. You do not want to send emails to a spam trap. The result is a negative impact on your sender reputation. This is a big deal, and you want to avoid hitting these traps. Do not purchase lists. Ever.

Double opt-in. The very first thing you need to protect a healthy list begins with requiring a double opt-in for subscribers. Double opt-in is a process when someone clicks a link to join your list. They should receive an email informing them that they need to confirm that they wished to join your list. This is a check to make sure someone doesn’t subscribe someone else to your list. It also gives a way out for someone who may have accidentally clicked the subscribe link and then went ahead and put their email address in. Yes, it’s possible for someone to mistakenly do that.

But even with double opt-in, you will still have people who subscribe just because they want your free lead magnet. Sometimes these people will use an email address they set up just for this purpose. Otherwise, it is a dead email address. They will never engage with your following emails. Remove them. You will find them through your email statistics.

Hard bounces. A hard bounce happens when there is a permanent reason the email cannot be delivered. A common cause for a hard bounce is when the email address doesn’t exist. If your email service provider doesn’t automatically remove addresses that hard bounce, you need to remove them from your list as soon as you see them in your statistics.

Inactive subscribers. You should remove subscribers who have not opened your emails or clicked on anything in months. You may choose to send an email informing those particular subscribers that you are cleaning the list and letting them opt to stay in. It should be made clear they will be removed for inactivity if they don’t respond by clicking a link you provide for them to remain on your list.

Segment your list. Segmenting is done by using tags to put subscribers into groups. Most of the time, you shouldn’t email your entire list at the same time. For example, if you have a list made of avid gardeners, your subscribers will have different interests. Some may have house plants while others have outdoor gardens. And some will have house plants and outdoor gardens. These subscribers can be segmented based on what kinds of plants they are interested in, house plants, outdoor gardens, or both. You would not send an email advertising climbing rose bushes to someone who only has an interest in house plants. There is a high chance those people would not open your emails. And that is bad for your metrics. Segmenting is intelligent list management and everyone should use tags to do this simple grouping.

While many things can harm your email deliverability, some things can help.

Provide valuable content. Always send emails that give value, even if it is something as small as giving subscribers a good chuckle or making them feel good. Yes, that is value.

Add to contacts list. A good practice is to ask new subscribers to add you to their contact list or to hit reply and provide some small piece of information. Those are good for sender reputation. Those things indicate the person wants to hear from you. You can ask them any question. Such as just to let you know they received your welcome email. You can tell them why replying will help make sure they receive your emails.

Encourage interaction. Ask your subscribers to reply to questions. Ask them to forward emails to people who would be interested in the content. Ask them to click links in CTAs (call to action). You have to tell your subscribers what you want them to do. Don’t expect them to read your mind.

Favorite or star emails. This one is out of your hands, but it’s another good indicator for your emails. You can ask people to favorite or star emails that have extremely valuable, or necessary content. And you should always provide content they would want to keep.

As you can see in this article, many things can harm the deliverability of your email. But if you follow these tips, you will greatly decrease your chances of running into serious problems. Always keep in mind, it is far easier to keep your list in good shape than to try to repair the damage. It isn’t that difficult to do things the right way. And the best part is that even if you end up purging a large number of subscribers to keep your list healthy… You will have a more engaged list and better conversions. Even things that may sound hard to do, like culling the list, are beneficial. While it may feel hard to let go of large quantities of subscribers, it will benefit you and will give better returns than keeping non-engaged subscribers on your list. And it will keep you in good standing with the email overlords.