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Time to Spring Clean Your Email File

As the days grow longer and the sun shines brighter, it’s time to let some light in and clean out those pesky cobwebs that may be lurking around your email file and hindering your performance. Here are some of our favorite Spring Cleaning measures to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your email file:

1. Assess: Do a top to bottom, nook and cranny inspection of your email program – what’s working, what isn’t, and why? Are you experiencing higher than usual list churn? Are your click-through rates declining? Are you facing issues with email deliverability and higher than usual unsubscribe rates? Are you noticing a decline in your response rates? Having a clear understanding of what is happening in your email program is the first step in a thorough spring cleaning effort.

2. Declutter: Sort and segment your email file by levels of activity and/or inactivity in order to properly manage the communications to the various segments represented on your file. For example, if someone hasn’t opened or clicked through any of your emails in the past 6 months, it likely does not make sense to keep them in the same communications stream as your most active and engaged constituents. Instead, consider implementing a reactivation series for the inactive segments and monitoring their engagement and activity. If they remain inactive, perhaps it’s time to purge.

3. Purge: Isolate and remove undeliverable, bogus, perpetually blacklisted, and bad email addresses as well as chronically inactive addresses from your file. This will help improve deliverability and efficiency of your file as a whole without the excess baggage. It really is possible to do more with less.

4. Keep It Clean: Email list hygiene is not a one-time fix. It requires ongoing commitment and attention to the cleanliness of your file. We encourage you to employ a M.A.I.D process (Monthly Address Integrity and Decluttering) at your own organization in order to avoid a bigger clean up later.

Happy Spring Cleaning!

 

 

Kacey Crawford