Sending emails to users who don’t even open them, buying lists from third parties or hitting spam traps are factors that can make it unlikely that your messages will reach subscribers’ mailboxes. However, applying a good list cleaning will help you improve the delivery ratios of your email marketing campaigns, while reducing costs, since your contact list will not be made up of users with whom there is no effective connection.

It is important to realize that the contact list is the foundation of any professional email marketing campaign. That is why it is not a minor detail to keep them running optimally. In this article we guide you on how to clean your contact list and maximize the results of your mailing campaigns.

What is data cleansing in email marketing?

In concrete terms, data cleansing in email marketing is the process you perform to purge the erroneous data on your list . In other words, it involves managing the databases to perform any of the following actions:

• Delete duplicate contacts.
• Review and correct misspelled email addresses.
• Identify users with little relevance or zero interactions.

A good cleanup will help you have a more reliable and useful list to accompany your email campaigns. Bringing consistency to your database will save you many problems in the future and, logically, is likely to increase the ROI of your campaigns.

Having a dirty contact list also greatly affects your metrics. When you have contacts with the characteristics mentioned above, it is impossible for you to make clear studies on the performance of your campaigns. You will probably notice lower performance, few openings, few clicks, zero conversions and, in general, very few interactions. This only means one thing: you are sending your messages to the wrong armenia phone number data people and what you need is to do a good cleaning of your email database.

Broadly speaking, cleaning your email marketing database translates into these benefits: 

• You improve your reputation.
• You avoid spam complaints.
• Boost your email delivery capabilities.
• You maximize conversions.
• You can make more profitable campaigns.
• You can better measure results.
• You manage to retain your subscribers.

When to clean the email database?

Contact lists can often become outdated . This happens landing pages for sms marketing: best practices with examples because the status of email addresses and other data about your contacts is constantly changing. In some cases, it is due to technical issues . For example, when a subscriber’s inbox becomes full and they decide to change email accounts. But it can also be due to user behavior. 

There are situations in which subscribers who have japan number list always opened your emails stop doing so. It may be because they are not interested in what you are offering them. Or, simply, because they do not have time to read all the proposals they receive. These contacts are no longer valuable. And, in fact, they affect your campaigns significantly. That is why you need to clean up and eliminate those users who do not interact with your emails.

Why is it important to clean up the database?

There are several interesting reasons why cleaning your database is no longer an option but an obligation for your email marketing campaigns How to clean to be effective. Here are some key reasons why you should be prioritizing this task:

1.- You avoid spam

You’re probably already familiar with spam filters. Most of them rely on very specific criteria to determine whether your email will reach the main inbox or, on the contrary, will end up classified as spam.

What happens in this case is that if your emails are marked as spam by a percentage of recipients, they can be categorized as such . In this way, email providers will send them to this inbox by default.

Of course, this can be solved with good list hygiene. In addition, with MDirector you have the option of testing through an antispam test that helps evaluate the criteria of your campaign before sending it and will tell you if you meet the criteria required by the filters.

2.- You comply with the GDPR regulations

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is becoming more and more strict in Europe. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain the explicit consent of each contact on your list. And, as far as possible, you should go beyond simple consent and implement a double opt-in system. To do this, you must send a confirmation email in which your subscribers approve whether they want to remain in your database. This consent will be essential to be added to the list.

The benefit for your list is that, on the one hand, you avoid false or erroneous accounts being registered . But, in addition, you prevent some serious sanctions by complying strictly with the GDPR. Finally, another important aspect is that you will not have uninterested subscribers on your contact list. Basically because, from the start, all those who arrive have agreed to receive your communications.

3.- You improve your performance

It’s important to keep your list clean because it will affect the overall performance of your email marketing campaigns. It’s not just about the volume of users you have in your database. In these cases, quality matters .

In this sense, it is interesting that your subscriber list is full of interested people, connected and attentive to what you send . If this does not happen, the measurement will be affected. But, more importantly, having engaged users will allow you to propose appropriate lead nurturing strategies . Which, logically, will end up improving your engagement data.

4.- You maintain data integrity

There are several criteria that companies in general must meet when processing data for different purposes within the organization. The main criteria are: accuracy, consistency, validity and conformity . Therefore, when cleaning the company’s databases, including those used for email marketing campaigns, only the data that is accurate, consistent, valid and uniform will remain.

5.- Improve segmentation

List organization is also essential to improve the user experience. By properly segmenting the database , you can know what to offer, when and to whom . This way, you will have selected the most engaged users and you will always offer your products and services adapted to their specific needs at all times.

Cleaning your email marketing database allows you to know which contacts are duplicated in lists that have the same purpose and many other problems that complicate the process and make it less effective. Remember that at the time of subscription, the contact may have made mistakes that, in the long run, can come back to haunt you.

How to clean your email marketing database step by step

Sending to unengaged users, purchasing lists from third parties, or hitting spam traps can cause serious deliverability issues and fail to reach inboxes. But if you take care of the hygiene of your email marketing lists, the result will be a fairly clean list of contacts and reach their inbox. Follow the best route to achieve exceptional deliverability!

Now that you know how important it is to keep your list of records clean, it’s time to get to work and tackle that list that is probably already causing problems. To do so, keep these aspects in mind:

A.- Check and remove hard bounces

Email marketing platforms like MDirector make your job easier by automatically eliminating hard bounces, helping you maintain a healthy contact list. It also has tools that will help you visualize bounces and their causes. As a general rule, they are divided into soft bounces and hard bounces.

1. Soft bounces are those caused by a temporary error and will probably resolve themselves.
2. On the other hand, hard bounces are those for which there is no easy solution. If the email address does not exist, there is little you can do to reach its owner.

The first thing you should do in your list hygiene process is to review the reasons and delete these contacts. This is data that, as we have seen, can be damaging your reputation as a brand that sends email campaigns and make them less profitable.

B.- Allows the discharges

It’s clear that you’ve worked hard to get your contacts and enrich your list. But remember that it’s about quality, not quantity. It’s necessary, and required by law, that you offer the option to unsubscribe by adding a button at the end of each campaign you send. Some brands hide it to prevent subscribers from unsubscribing. However, what good is it to you if a user doesn’t want to receive your messages but can’t find a way to tell you so?

Manually cleaning up contacts that unsubscribe or opt out of your communications can be tedious, but if you have an emailing platform that removes these contacts automatically, you can rest easy . MDirector, for example, offers this functionality, benefiting your domain reputation and saving you valuable time.

Remember that all email marketing platforms have plans that include limits on subscribers and sending. For example, in MDirector you have a limit of 5,000 contacts in the free plan, although in the paid plans it is unlimited. Don’t waste space that could be occupied by valuable contacts and make sure you have an interested audience.