Raise your hand if your email list is neat and tidy.
(Crickets)
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
For busy small business owners, there is nothing more distressed than a messy, disorganized, outdated list of email subscribers.
Especially if you’ve acquired this list and have no idea how to fix it.
Just the thought of facing it makes you want to slam down your laptop screen right now.
Well, don’t do that. I’m going to explain to you how to organize, purge, and clean your subscriber list so it’s easier to work with and gets you more reliable results.
Step 1: Face the Facts
Take an honest, hard look at your contact list:
- Do you have lists you’ve never sent to?
- Do you have a consistently high bounce rate every time you send out an email campaign?
- Is your list messy and complex?
- Does it stress you out?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, continue to Step 2.
Step 2: Deal With Your Bounces
If you haven’t been keeping a record of your bounced emails, start doing so by using tags.
Create a tag to handle all of the contacts that bounce back when you send an email. After you send a few emails, you’ll begin to see that some of the same contacts bounce with each campaign.
Here’s how to stay on top of email bounces:
- Distinguish contacts that consistently bounce with each sent campaign
- Recover any email addresses you can by correcting obvious typos
- Ask for updated data from anyone who you have additional ways to reach
- Remove the invalid email addresses by using the Clearalist email list cleaning service.
Step 3: Deep Clean Your Contact Lists
If you’ve been with Clearalist for a while, or you inherited an account with us, chances are you already have a clean contacts email list.
To keep a high deliverability rate and consistently reach people who are engaged with your content, you’ll need to do some regular cleaning with Clearalist to bring your list up-to-date.
Some Other Methods
1. Age your list – If you’ve begun to get spam complaints or high bounces, consider aging your list by the sign-up date. You can export a .csv file and sort the sign-up date category chronologically to determine the ‘oldest’ contacts on your list that are more likely to be disengaged. Then, send them an email asking them to update their profile.
2. Use a Permission Reminder – This looks like a little information at the top of each email that describes why someone is receiving your email and how they can unsubscribe if they no longer want to receive your emails. This simple reminder can cut down your spam complaints and guarantee that only the contacts that want to obtain your emails stay on your list.
