2tipsFor many email marketers, mailing lists have a high quality when many of the recipients open their email, read it and act in the desired way, so for example, visit the online store, or even better, buy a product or download a document advertised in the email.

When we talk about distribution lists and their quality, the subject can basically get divided into three phases: the acquisition of new subscribers, the management of the subscriber list and the data hygiene. In doing so, each stage provides the opportunity to improve the quality of the distribution list.

Phase I: Attracting new subscribers

  • Make sure that you have a standardized log-on process for any way you attract new subscribers. A uniform process helps ensure that you receive consistent data that in turn facilitates segmentation and a relevant target group.
  • Boost the growth of your list via online and offline platforms. Provide the opportunity to sign up to your email communication, both on social networks and point-of-sale.
  • Use a double opt-in process, if possible, so that the new subscribers must confirm their registration before being included in the mailing list. Please note that the confirmation email must not contain any promotional aspects.
  • Provide a Preference Center and in this way offer your subscribers the option to select which subjects are of particular relevance or interest and to find out what frequency they prefer.
  • Send a welcome email and immediately offer in the first email an incentive for getting interaction - such as a welcome discount or preferred (time-limited) access to special offers.
  • Identify problematic email addresses and prevent their inclusion in your distribution list by using specialized services providers such as LeadSpend or Bright Verify.

Phase II: Management of subscriber data

  • Focus on getting better and better segmentation, and refine the target group-specific approach, as well as the relevance of the information to respective addressees. To do so, you can consult the Preference Centre, order history, web analytics, engagement analyses, and other demographic data, which can provide excellent clues.
  • Follow the engagement performance figures for each segment, which include the reading rate, clicks, conversions, and the rate of unread and deleted emails.
  • Track and monitor key performance indicators as a function of the respective source address, so the root of any problems usually can be identified and eliminated much easier. If you find, for example, that an address source (perhaps the newsletter subscription at the point-of-sale) has a particularly high number of unknown addresses, or very low engagement figures, you should get granular on the login process and take a second look.
  • Observe especially those subscribers who respond to your emails, as this group wants to communicate with you. Encourage this commitment consciously.
  • Pay attention to the messages of absence, as their reports often point out that an address is no longer actively used. This is your chance to remove the address from the distribution list before they can cause a bounce. Further, such messages prove that there is no spam trap.

Phase III: List Hygiene

  • Identify problematic addresses in your mailing lists by using, for instance, services from Bright Verify, Fresh Address or LeadSpend and prevent spam traps.
  • Start with a re-commitment or win-back campaign to encourage subscribers that became inactive to interact again with your email content. Be consistent and really remove inactive subscribers from your mailing lists before they complain about your emails.
  • Make sure that email addresses of returned or bounce-back messages are removed from your mailing list - quickly and consistently.
  • Give subscribers the opportunity to update their email address and point out this possibility in a clearly visible way in the footer of your emails, as it has been proven beneficial to unsubscribe rates.
  • Sign up for all available and relevant feedback loops and suppress the dispatch of emails to all those who complain, which means have marked your email in their email client as "spam".
  • Create a list of all retained email addresses, which is particularly important if your communication runs across different systems - as the list should apply to all your systems.
  • , such as sales@, info@, etc., and check the addresses on typical typos, like @yhaoo.com, @gmaiol.com.

The quality of the mailing lists is the most crucial component for the quality of the email program. You can produce the most creative emails, hire the best writers and promote the most attractive offers, but if you send a message to a mailing list of unknown users, spam traps and inactive or uninterested recipients, you reduce the chance that your content encourages the addressee to purchase amply.

By Daniela La Marca