July 2017
Doctor in the House: The Importance of Keeping Your Email List Healthy
Data has become the undisputed lifeblood of many a business in our modern world: it powers CRMs, informs strategic decisions, and helps organisations to better know their clients. In order to make that data valuable and work properly, however, businesses need to keep it healthy.
One collection of data in particular which could benefit from a regular clean is your email list. Whether you’re using it to communicate new offers to clients, or just to promote your services to prospects, it’s absolutely essential to keep your email list healthy. But why? And what’s the risk of not properly managing your email list? We’re here to share our insights!
What Happens to Email Lists Over Time?
Over time, email lists tend to ‘go bad’ – that is to say, the information no longer becomes of much use to businesses. That’s because some email accounts are abandoned, others are deleted, and there might even be a typo or two preventing messages being sent.
These accounts are sometimes taken up by Internet Service Providers to be used as ‘spam traps’. These traps detect unsolicited emails and report the sender; in this case, they’re unsolicited because there’s no way an inactive account could have opted into email communication.
Eventually, your email list will start to see a lot more bounces, as well as potential feedback if users haven’t opted into communications. As the bounce rate continues to climb, you could find your organisation blocked by various ISPs, hindering your email marketing and general communication.
How Can You Ensure Email List Health?
With your online activity at risk, it’s important to regularly return to your email list and update where necessary. There are also a few other actions you can take to ensure your data is as healthy as it’s possible to be:
1. Make sure customers are happy to be subscribed to any mailing lists to prevent them from hitting the spam button. This will instantly go a long way to saving on a headache further down the line, and makes your data that much more valuable.
2. Once they’re on the list, regularly review activity reports to see whether or not people are actually opening emails, and offer them a chance to unsubscribe. Not only does this help with your ongoing relationship, it also protects you from anti-spam laws.
3. Consider importing your email lists into your bespoke CRM tool for a better overview of your data, whilst keeping it secured on the Cloud through daily back-ups.
4. Aside from maintaining email list health, you could also put in place different communication methods for customers, based on their personal preference – such as via text or call. Through a bespoke CRM solution, these methods are simpler to execute than ever before.
The Result
Putting a little effort in to keep your email list healthy now will end up going a long way in adding value to your email marketing and communication efforts. Not only will you have valuable, accurate data that works for you, but you’ll also have a much happier customer and contact base, who are happy to hear from you.
And with healthy email lists, you can be sure you’ll be in the clear from hitting spam filters and inviting the ire of ISPs – making your job a whole lot easier!
Looking for a way to streamline client communications with a bespoke solution? Look no further! Get in touch with the Lunar team to arrange a free demo today.