Those who work with email marketing know that to obtain good results it is always important to manage the email list well.
Do not SPAM and send emails with adequate frequency and relevant content always helps to keep the list "hot" and the results are better and better.
However, other concerns need to be considered in maintaining a healthy foundation.
There is also the case of various companies that were not disciplined in terms of frequency and now want to re-establish contact with an old email base.
The most common step they end up taking, which is to import that list into their email marketing campaign, can end up being like throwing stones at themselves and end up negatively influencing the company's email reputation.
So that this does not happen, there is an action called mailing sanitization, an issue that we will discuss in this post.
Why sanitize
First of all, it is very important to keep in mind that sanitization does not work for a purchased email base. We have already explained why your company should not buy an email list, and that, even sanitized, a purchased base will never have the relevance and quality of an email list conquered legally and organically.
The truth is that, over time, there is a process of depreciation of the email base: many people change jobs and with it their corporate address, and others change the email service itself, to name a few examples. This is normal behavior and there is no way to avoid it. However, you must always be vigilant so that the loss is not even greater.
Internet services are always looking for ways to combat the sending of SPAM. If your business is sending emails to a lot of addresses that don't exist, that's seen as a strong sign that the list isn't quality and isn't treated with due care. So the email-sending server is "frowned upon" and even when the message is relevant and the recipient wants to receive it, the content can end up in antispam filters.
Therefore, the main objective of sanitization is to eliminate from the database all emails that are not valid or relevant for the next campaigns of your company. Cutting out irrelevant emails is essential to maintaining a good reputation and ensuring good deliverability.
Sanitizing a current email list
If your company already maintains a routine of sending email marketing and the base is used to receiving emails, the process is a little easier.
There is some information that most tools provide that
is very important for list maintenance:
- Hard bounces are those emails that are considered invalid. This includes those that already existed and ceased to exist, those that were intentionally wrongly indicated, and also emails with typing errors;
- Soft bounces: they are valid emails, but for some reason, they could not be delivered. The reason is usually that the inbox is full;
- SPAM claims: in the vast majority of email services you can mark a message as SPAM. This indicates that the user is upset and believes that your company did not have the right to send them that email;
- Requests to unsubscribe: every company must offer an unsubscribe option in the emails sent. That means that the user no longer wants to receive those messages.
With frequent mailing and that information in hand, it becomes easy to keep the list sanitized. It only remains to remove, before each shipment, users who already have hard bounces, SPAM complaints, and unsubscribe requests. In the case of soft bounces, a few more submission attempts are recommended. If we reach, for example, 10 undelivered shipments, delisting is also recommended.
Most of the good email marketing tools (including RD Station ) already do this automatically.
Sanitizing an old email list
When we talk about an old email base, we mean the one that is lost or forgotten for some time. The contacts may have been generated through normal forms, exchanged for eBooks, or, for example, received in courses and workshops carried out by your company some time ago. The truth is that the list was not used until now and will be active again.
This case is much more difficult to handle. The server scans to identify SPAM are often done on a percentage basis. When we spend a long time without sending and, therefore, a long time without getting returns to clean the list, a series of problems usually occur.
Usually, invalid emails accumulate, generating a high rate of hard bounces. Many people do not remember that they registered and mark the email as SPAM or ask to unsubscribe. The consequence is that the reputation of the email-sending server is seriously affected.
Most of the companies that offer email marketing services can notice the poor performance at the beginning of the shot and immediately stop sending the rest of the campaign. This poor performance can result in blocking and even the definitive exclusion of an account. After all, if the service delivery potential goes down, the service loses value and, of course, customers.
If the list that the company has is really good and aimed at a relevant audience, two very important things have to be done:
Try to remove hard bounces
If your company leaves finding out who the hard bounces are by the time of sending, the chances of the campaign being blocked and failing are high.
There are various services specialized in verifying if an email is valid and, even if you have to spend something, it is worth it. That should considerably lower the number of invalid emails and it's the price you pay for staying out of touch for so long.
Choose the content sent very well and start slowly
Beyond reducing the number of hard bounces, you also need to lower the number of SPAM claims and unsubscribe requests. In that case, there isn't much magic that can be done. The secret is to go slowly.
Don't start using the list to promote a product or service, try to generate more value. Offer a great article, eBook, or free lecture, a list of pointers of value to that prospect. This type of content tends to have a much greater receptivity and that is why it should be the focus at that moment of rapprochement when the relationship is fragile.
Also, try to keep the topic that brought the person to your list. For example, if these contacts have been captured in a course, or have been captured through the download of some material, make a campaign on similar issues.
Finally, be careful with the frequency. If someone wasn't getting any email from your company, they might be surprised if that starts happening much more frequently, overnight.
