Why Email Hygiene is so important
Email marketing changes dramatically every few months. Unless you are involved in online group discussions or the latest trends, you are going to miss out on the new deliverability breakthroughs. Because of the latest changes in email marketing, email hygiene has become a must for all email marketers. Here are the 3 reasons to practice good email list hygiene.
Reason #1: Deliverability
There are 3 kinds of email marketers:
1.) Black
2.) Grey
3.) White
Black email marketers are hackers that harvest emails online. They have no regard for unsubscribes or following any legalities or rules for spam. Believe it or not, black listed email marketers do not pay for list leaning services because their approach to spam is the shotgun affect. They do not care about deliverability and hope that by spamming billions, at least a few will buy/click their advertisements.
Grey email marketers follow unsubscribes, law and rules for spam, yet they are caught up in building their lists through trade, purchase or leasing their lists. This gorilla marketing approach can kill deliverability by sending advertisements to people who do not know who the advertiser is/are. Grey listed email marketers must use list cleaning services for their email hygiene to remove seeds, traps, protestors, litigators and bounces.
White email marketers received their subscribers from their own marketing efforts. The old fashioned way – blood, sweat and tears! The subscribers know who they are and are interested in their messages. Deliverability for white email marketers should be perfect, but if any white emailer neglects their list by letting it stay stagnant, will run into major deliverability issues and account suspension from ESP’s. Why? Well, we had a client who manufactures computer chips. They had a list of 2 million and had not marketed to it for a year or so. Their ESP suspended their account because they not only had a high bounce rate, (11%) they also hit a few spam traps. So even White email marketers should practice good email hygiene.
Reason #2: Protestors
The online world shoves forms in our faces! The average person fills out at least 1 form a week whether for a credit score, credit card, newsletter, online purchase or downloading an application. Within a year, the average consumer has filled out at least 52 forms!
Most legit companies keep your data safe, but they all send you information every day and this bombardment challenges the human psyche and their patience. Memory loss will play a factor due to the average sufferer of depression and stress (1 of 3 people), therefore, you will receive complaints from consumers whether they are confirmed opt-in or not. This is a fact!
Email service provider threshold for protestors (complainers/litigators/screamers) is lessening every year due to spam fighters, fear of spam and the continuous improvements in cleaning up the industry. Most legit email marketers are now using email hygiene companies to remove static lists of frequent protestors to improve deliverability and open rates.
Reason #3: Spamtraps
Black and grey emailers run into spam traps all the time. It’s a no brainer that these types need data cleansing, but what about white listed emailers? Do they run into spam traps? Yes indeed as mentioned above. In fact, spam fighters purchase thousands of expired domains every month in order to receive spam into their black-holes. Spam fighters also work with bulk domain resellers and ISP’s to monitor newly purchased domains for spam. If any white listed email marketer changes domain names, company names or let their list remain stagnet, they most definitely will run into a spam trap.
All email marketers must practice good email list hygiene. Email list hygiene companies are the future of email marketing. The endless war between spam fighters and emailers will not go away as evidence that spam has not ceased since the early 90’s. If you’re thinking hard on this article, then you should test your records and see how many traps, complainers, litigators and bounces are in YOUR list.
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