Successful email marketing depends on measuring the relative success of each marketing email you send out, tracking deliverability, open rates and clickthrough rates and tweaking your campaigns accordingly.

For this to work, however, you need accurate data and you can only get this if your database of email addresses is clean. Spam reporting, higher management fees, lost time, and unreliable open rate reports are a sampling of what email marketers have to face should a list consistently go unfiltered.

What Is A Clean Email List?

By clean we mean valid email addresses that you know your emails are being delivered to. There are several steps you can take to ensure your database is well maintained.

Your email marketing software should be able to provide you with data on the following. If not, find one that does or enlist the help of an email marketing company.

The first thing you should do is remove all email addresses that repeatedly appear on your “bounce” list. Addresses that fall into your bounce folder have rejected your email as spam or are no longer in existence. Repeatedly sending emails to addresses that bounce will get you reported for spam and your emails blocked from being delivered.

After 3-4 “bounces” you should consider removing the address to prevent spam reporting. Email marketing companies who have whitelist agreements with major ISPs will definitely help in steering clear of being reported for spam.

Email marketing companies will likely charge more the bigger your database of email addresses is, so you could cut down on wasted emails by requiring your recipients to resubscribe every 12 months.

Those that are interested in what you have to say will do so, while those that never read your emails will be trimmed from the list, saving you money.

Another thing you must do, as regularly as possible, is manually cut defective email addresses. Email addresses that obviously contain typos or are not complete should be removed every month if possible to minimise management costs and reduce the risk of being reported for spam.

You should consider organising your list of the best email addresses into groups. Over time, as you begin to see a pattern of regular readers, you may decide to cut down on send outs to less interested recipients. You can target groups with an offer that would appeal only to them, rather than waste money hitting everyone in your list.

This also ensures that more loyal readers are recognised and appreciated, making them more likely to remain on your list.

Of course, you don’t have to do all the work! Giving your recipients the option to unsubscribe from your email marketing list via a simple link will make sure your list is even cleaner, as those who aren’t interested in your message will simply remove themselves.

Every few weeks, check the outgoing link to make sure that you are receiving unsubscribe notices. Also, add a physical address and/or phone number on the bottom of each email message you send to ensure that any reader having problems contacting your company has alternative means of communication.

Following this advice will help you deliver more effective email marketing campaigns to an interested and loyal following, increasing your sales and profits at the same time.

Author Bio: Trevor Richards is writing on behalf of Extravision, specialists in email marketing services.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: email marketing, email database management, email list management