5 Tips for Email List Management

List management is the process of maintaining a database in an Email Service Provider (ESP) to ensure optimal performance. A successful email marketing campaign strategy depends on list hygiene. To grow a healthy list, a marketer ought to clean the list regularly by getting rid of hard bounces, excluding soft bounces, enabling a double opt-in, and segmenting the list.  Cleaning up a years-old list and sending to engaged segments cut the spam complaint rate by 77% for Compression Sale, an online compression stocking retailer.

Welcome New Subscribers

The Welcome email is a series of emails sent to new subscribers. It helps to create brand awareness, establish client expectations, and highlight what makes you unique. By building trust with the customer, they are likely to return for future purchases, helping you to retain a healthy list of engaged subscribers. Additionally, 74% of subscribers expect to receive a welcome email – they generate 4x more opens and 5x more clicks than a standard marketing email. A high open and click rate can lead to increased inbox placement, an indicator that your list is engaged.

Adopt a Warm Send Strategy When You have a Newly Segmented List

From the beginning of their journey, it is important to engage subscribers. Reach out to them while they are still excited and emotionally vested in what you have to offer. Warming up can significantly improve deliverability, build sender reputation, enhance email engagement, and avoid blacklisting. 

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Do Not Practice Cold Emailing as this Hurts Your Brand Reputation

Cold emailing refers to sending a message to someone you have never interacted with. It’s called ‘cold’ due to the lack of a pre-existing relationship with the recipient. This is a risky and ineffective email strategy for several reasons:

1. Low open and response rates: Recipients are unfamiliar with the brand, the sender, or the content. This may result in a low return on investment (ROI) for the marketing effort. 
2. High spam complaints: because of cold emailing, the sender’s reputation and credibility can be harmed due to a high number of spam complaints 
3. Decreased email deliverability: can result from a high number of spam complaints with a high possibility of future emails not reaching the recipient’s inbox.
4. Cold emailing may violate CAN-SPAM laws and other best practice rules in the US, which can result in legal consequences

Perform List-Cleaning Regularly to Maintain Good List Hygiene 

Low open rates indicate that your email list contains people who are no longer interested in receiving content and are not engaging with your messaging. Cleaning your list is crucial to maintaining good deliverability, as inbox providers (such as Gmail & Yahoo) reward senders that have high engagement rates with better inbox placement. A Klaviyo study shows that the only way to earn better inbox placement is to have low spam rates, low unsubscribe rates, and open rates consistently above 33%.

Optimize List Growth by Using List Growth Integration Methods

There are different methods used to grow an email list effectively. They include pop-ups, embedded forms, floating buttons, reviews, cross-selling, countdown timers, and exit intent offers. A Campaign Monitor study shows that email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. To grow and maintain a healthy list, it’s better to add 20 engaged subscribers than it is to add 100 unengaged ones. Here, quality supersedes quantity because a quality email address list = engaged subscribers. A survey conducted with 245 marketing influencers found that 66% of small businesses see increased email list quality as their top priority, followed by 56% for increased lead conversion rates.

Need To Improve Your List Management Strategy? It is Never Too Late to Turn the Wheel — Smartsites Is Here To Help

At SmartSites, we strive to deliver exceptional results. To get started, call us at 201-870-6000 and speak with our representative. You can also fill out an online form to kick-start your journey of (email) success.