Effectively managing and keeping the contact list up to date is perhaps an essential function of an email marketing agency yet it is often not given enough emphasis. After an agency has amassed an organic list of contacts, it has to ensure its integrity to achieve better results in the long run. In the realm of email marketing, List management has acquired increased importance and asks for a dedicated team which puts in a lot of thinking for its proper execution. Hard bounces, soft bounces, and uninterested subscribers are likely to have a bad impact on email deliverability. So here are the best List Management practices as summed up by Mr. Mahesh Meena after a critical scrutiny of minute details involved in the process.
- Always send a greeting email to new subscribers When you send a welcome to new subscribers, there is a likelihood that out of courtesy they will add your email address to their approved senders’ list in case your initial email lands in their spam folder. Plus, it’s a smart thought to inform them what they should expect out of their subscription as far as frequency, content etcetera are concerned. You must also educate them on how to set their preferences and opt-out of subscriptions if they want.
- Use subscription management diligently Researchers say that 66% of email users unsubscribe because of the emails they receive. So don’t lose a contact permanently just by storming them with emails. Subscription management allows contacts to alter their email preferences and tailor the content that they wish to receive from you and also set the frequency of the emails they receive.It gives a contact the ability to “unsubscribe” from certain types of emails, or they can opt-out altogether. This practice will ensure your compliance to CAN-SPAM and you will avoid being penalized or tagged as spam by the network
- Never overlook list hygiene It is believed that up to 25% of your email list nod each year. Look at it this way – people keep changing jobs all the time and eventually, email addresses change. Thus, the removal of your list of old, invalid emails becomes essential. Catering to invalid emails repeatedly will tell on your sender’s reputation, which will at the end of the day impact your ability to reach your contacts’ inbox.
- Employ Win back/re-engagement campaigns and get rid of unengaged subscribers Unengaged/Uninterested subscribers are a major hindrance in the way proper list management. Unengaged subscribers are those contacts still subscribed to your list, but they haven’t shown any interest in your emails for quite some time. These are the people who haven’t taken the pain of Unsubscribing and are simply ignoring and deleting your emails. But before removing unengaged subscribers from your list it is advised to execute re-engagement campaign.You’ll initially need to recognize any subscribers who haven’t opened and additionally clicked one of your emails inside the last 6-12 months. At that point, you’ll need to send those unengaged supporters a targeted email saying that they haven’t responded for a long time.
Essentially inquire as to whether they need to keep on receiving your messages and allow them to opt again. This gives you a lead generation opportunity to re-engage an unengaged reader, and in addition legitimize cleansing your list of the individuals who neglect to click on the re-engagement mail.
- Quality over quantityA big part of dealing with your rundowns is ensuring their integrity and undiluted-ness, free of invalid contacts and unengaged and uninterested contacts. Developing your lists the correct way—utilizing authorization-based membership strategies instead of buying lists —is the beginning stage of strong email marketing
Takeaway
Remember, Life is all about experiments and it keeps on improving through experimentation; that’s what is being quoted by our expert Mr. Mahesh Meena. To continue winning the digital marketing game, implement Email Marketing Best Practices by working on your content. Respect your customers and treat them as real people not as data. Give some value to your intelligent consumers and instead of quantity try working on the quality side.
