Cleaning Email Lists: A Guide to Better Engagement and Deliverability

Once upon a time, people tried to grow their email lists continuously. The belief was, the more email subscribers you have, the more revenue you can earn. However, it’s not just about the number. You need engaged and interested subscribers. Otherwise, that large list can start to work against you. Before focusing on growth, know that clean email lists are the foundation of a successful email marketing strategy. 

Not only do clean email lists reduce bounce rates and improve engagement, but they also ensure compliance with regulators and lead to better overall campaign performance and return on investment (ROI). Email marketing has the highest ROI potential of any marketing channel. 

In this guide let’s explore the benefits clean email lists bring, the best practices to keep your list in tip-top shape, and software options to make the process easier.

What does it mean to clean your email list?

Email list cleaning, also known as email list scrubbing, refers to the process of removing inactive, invalid, or high-risk email addresses from your email database.

Not everyone who signs up to your email list provides a valid email address. A mistake as simple as a typo can lead to syntax errors that yield an invalid email address. If you try to email that subscriber, the message will bounce.

Additionally, some visitors may choose to protect their privacy and use one of many disposable email generators. These addresses are valid for a brief period, and self-destruct shortly after.

Finally, know that email lists decay by ~25% annually. People change or abandon email addresses often.

If you clean your email list, you can effectively combat these issues before they impact your email list.

Why you should clean your email list

There are many benefits to email list cleaning. After making an effort to clean up email lists, you can enjoy:

1. Greater engagement rates and delivery

Having clean email lists directly impacts engagement rates. According to a study from HubSpot, regularly cleaned email lists can see open rates increase by up to 50%. High engagement rates are a strong signal to email service providers (ESPs) that your content is valuable. This helps improve your reputation and email deliverability.

Conversely, an email list that hasn’t been cleaned can lead to high bounce rates, which can negatively impact your sender score and cause emails to be filtered directly into spam folders where they’re less likely to be seen, even by loyal subscribers. 

In addition, when you scrub email lists to remove inactive subscribers, it allows you to focus your efforts on the people who are more likely to interact with your emails and your brand.

2. Better analytics

Clean email lists provide more reliable data on open rates, clickthrough rates (CTR), and other metrics, so you’re able to make more informed decisions about your email marketing strategy. For instance, you can better analyze the results of A/B testing.

3. Financial benefits

By focusing your efforts on engaged subscribers, you’ll maximize your email ROI. Sending emails to invalid addresses wastes resources and increases costs. Most email marketing platforms charge based on the number of subscribers, so removing inactive or invalid emails can help reduce costs as you’ll only pay for engaged contracts.

Clean email lists also provide more accurate data, so you’ll know your audience’s preferences. This allows you to create better-targeted campaigns with more accurate segmentation and personalization, which are key drivers of engagement and, ultimately, sales.

4. Regulatory compliance

Regularly cleaning your email list is also essential to stay in compliance with regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM. These laws require marketers to get explicit consent from recipients and provide clear opt-out mechanisms. Cleaning your email list ensures you’re only messaging those who have opted in to receive your content, which reduces the risk of penalties in addition to the benefits mentioned above.

Further, ensuring you remain in compliance shows respect for your audience and their preferences and privacy. This helps foster long-term trust and engagement.

How often should you clean your email list?

To maintain healthy email lists, it’s important not to just clean once and forget it.

Instead, establish a regular schedule to scrub your email list. How often you clean your email list will often depend on your business or industry. A general guideline forlarge email lists with frequent subscribers, email cleaning should be done monthly.

For medium-sized businesses that have regular campaigns, a quarterly schedule to clean up email lists should be sufficient. For small businesses or those that only email infrequently, you’ll still want to clean up email lists at least biannually. 

Pick a reoccurring day (e.g., the 5^th of every month or the second Tuesday), add it to your calendar, and prioritize the schedule to clean up email lists and prevent the accumulation of inactive or invalid addresses to ensure your lists remain healthy and engaged.

You can also use an email cleaning service with a real-time API or built-in integration to automate your cleaning.

Signs that you need to clean your email list

Recognizing the signs of a list that’s no longer in tip-top shape is crucial. It helps prevent your list from becoming dirty. 

• Watch for high bounce rates: According to experts in the industry, anything above 2% is considered high and indicates your list needs attention now, even if it’s ahead of your scheduled cleaning.
• Declining engagement metrics: Low open rates and clickthrough rates also signal that your lists contain too many inactive or uninterested subscribers. It’s especially important to watch for unusual spikes in subscriptions or drastic changes in engagement metrics, as this can indicate a bot problem. 

Identifying and removing bot subscriptions with email list scrubbing can be a crucial component of maintaining a healthy list and ensuring accurate engagement metrics. Look for patterns, which can include rapid signups from the same IP address or region, email addresses with random strings of characters, or repetitive patterns.

Some bots also use temporary or disposable email services or are from locations that don’t align with your target demographics. Often, there’s a mismatch in the subscriber details. For example, the first names don’t match the email patterns. Bots also can give themselves away with zero or minimal opens or interactions. 

If you do come across an email address (or several) that concerns you, consider using an email checker to verify the email address so you can remove fake or invalid email addresses immediately. 

How to clean your email list: step-by-step

Now that we know how important it is to clean email lists regularly, where do we start?

How to clean email lists is a common question. Fortunately, the answer is clear, especially with good email list cleaning software. 

Step 1: Start by removing email addresses that are obviously invalid. For instance, remove any with obvious typos or incorrect formats. In addition, you’ll want to remove hard bounces. 

You can manually do this, but it’s tedious work. An email validation tool can rapidly clean up email lists by detecting typos and syntax errors, and even provide corrections to potentially salvage the email address.

However, be aware that syntax checking is the bare minimum for cleaning email lists. It only checks that the email address structure is valid. It doesn’t include insights like SMTP checks (mailbox pinging), which verify that the address is real and in use.

Step 2: Consider using email list cleaning software. As mentioned above, more advanced validation techniques are necessary to verify that your email subscribers are real people. 

A dedicated validation tool will examine each of your subscribers on various levels, including ensuring that the mailbox is real and configured to receive your email messages. 

Without this step, you’ll need to email your list and manually check for hard bounces. Unfortunately, the more often your email domain and IP send bounced emails, the bigger the impact on your sender reputation.

Step 3: Segment your list. Divide your list into engaged, moderately engaged, and disengaged subscribers. 

Before deleting inactive subscribers, consider sending personalized re-engagement campaigns to encourage inactive subscribers to re-engage with your brand. For instance, ask them to update their preferences or confirm their interest. It’s also a good way to check in on soft bounces.

Best practices for cleaning email list

Once your email list is clean, you want to keep it that way. Here are some recommended ways to keep things tidy.

Use a double opt-in confirmation

One of the best practices for cleaning email lists includes implementing double opt-ins (if you haven’t already done so).

Whenever a user signs up on one of your registration forms, send them an automated email that asks them to confirm their subscription. That way, you verify that your subscribers genuinely want to hear from you and join your list.

Make it easy to unsubscribe

Interests and email addresses change, so you’ll also want to make it easy to opt-out. A simple, straightforward process with visible links to unsubscribe or update information can help you maintain your sender reputation and build trust with your subscribers. Plus, most email providers now require one-click unsubscribes. 

Automate tasks for clean email lists

Scrubbing emails can be effortless by automating it with email validation tools. 

You can automate the process by using an API or a direct API integration with your email validation platform. For example, if you use an ESP like Mailchimp, just connect your account, upload your list, and schedule email list cleaning to occur during set periods.

Streamlining the process helps you keep your email list clean and up-to-date while saving you time and effort. 

What comes after your email list Is clean?

Once your email list is clean, you can get back to focusing on high engagement levels. 

Segmentation and personalization

Start by ensuring your emails are relevant and provide valuable information for your audience. For instance, call them by name in the subject or body of the email and customize the content based on their preferences, past behavior, and demographics. This is where the segmentation we performed earlier can really come in handy. Segmenting your email lists allows you to send more targeted, relevant messages to each audience. 

Avoid spammy content

While we all like to sound clever, being clear and concise while creating curiosity can help encourage your audience to open and engage with your email. But be careful to avoid spam triggers terms like free, winner, act now, limited time, risk-free, urgent, cure, serious cash, and not spam. 

Focus on design

Add high-quality, relevant images to make your emails more visually appealing. And use consistent branding, including colors, fonts, and logos, to reinforce your brand identity. You also want to ensure your emails are readable. That is, make sure they’re mobile-friendly (using responsive design) with single-column layouts and nice fonts. 

Emphasize the value

Whether it’s a short or long-form email, remember that each email provides value, such as informative content, interesting storytelling that creates emotional connections, exclusive offers, or useful tips. Compelling call-to-actions (CTAs) can then guide readers on what to do next. 

Test new things

A/B testing allows you to regularly see which elements (e.g., subject lines, content, images, testimonials, and CTAs) of your emails resonate best with your audience. Don’t be afraid to experiment as even small changes can make a significant impact.

Don’t send too often

Finally, adjusting the frequency of your emails based on your subscribers’ preferences can encourage engagement. According to a survey by Marketing Sherpa, 49% of subscribers prefer to receive promotional emails from chosen brands once a week. But your audience may differ. Find out by testing emails or simply asking how often they want to receive emails from you. 

Conclusion: clean email lists now

Cleaning your email lists is an essential practice for any successful email marketing strategy. It improves engagement, deliverability, and compliance, all while providing valuable insights into your audience. 

When should you start cleaning your email list? The best time is now. By following the steps and best practices in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to maintaining a healthy, happy, engaged email list that drives results for your business or organization. 

One tool can make it even easier: The Zero Bounce free email verifier tool can help you check to see if an email is valid, invalid, or high-risk so your content reaches your real customers, and you maintain your brand reputation and build trust with your subscribers.

Want more credits to clean email lists? Create a free account today and get 100 credits monthly to scrub your contacts.

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