Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to connect with your target audience in order to build a relationship and make sales. But have you ever taken the time to clean your email list? If the answer is no, then you’re wasting money, time and effort on marketing to people who aren’t interested in your brand.
Cleaning your email also refers to email scrubbing or purging. It means removing unengaged subscribers from your email list so you can only market to people who want to receive your emails.
This is an essential part of targeting your marketing and you should review your email list hygiene at least twice per year.
Is It Time To Clean Your Email List?
On average, email lists degrade by about 22% every year. And a third of your subscribers never open your emails, nor do they click your call to action. So what’s the point of marketing to them? That’s where mailing list scrubbing comes in.
So how do you know it’s time to clean your email list? You’ll see the first warning signs in your email marketing stats.
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1. Declining Open and Click Rate
When you log into your email marketing app, you can see the open and click rate for your campaigns. Observe what’s been happening for the last few email campaigns. If there’s a declining open and click rate pattern, then you’ve got a problem.
2. Increase in Spam Complaint and Unsubscribe Rate
Next, look at individual campaigns and check the spam complaint and unsubscribe rate. For example, if you’re using AWeber, you’ll see this in each campaign statistics report. If many people are unsubscribing and reporting your emails as spam, this is a sign it’s time to clean your email list.
Also, look at email marketing benchmarks for your industry. And while every list is different, if your click and open rates are below average, then maybe you need to improve your marketing practices.
3 Reasons Why You Should Clean Your Email List
1. Engagement Feeds Engagement
Success in email marketing is based on engagement. For instance, have you noticed that on Facebook when you like, comment, click or share a post, you start seeing more of that person’s or brand’s posts? Just like Facebook tracks your engagement, email providers are also moving in the same direction.
The best way to boost the chances of your emails being seen and opened is to maintain a healthy list by getting rid of the dead weight.
2. Subscribers Cost Money
Cleaning up your list will lower the cost of email marketing and it will improve your ROI. Most email providers charge you per list member, per actual person subscriber, and by emails you send. People who aren’t engaging earn you nothing!
3. An Unhealthy List Makes It Hard to Know What’s Working
Let’s say you have 20,000 subscribers but in reality, about half stopped engaging. When you run tests or assess whether your email marketing strategies are working, those 10,000 inactive subscribers will cloud your results. And it doesn’t matter what you do. They’ll continue to be inactive.
You want to learn what works with your active subscribers, right? Then, purge those 10,000 inactive subscribers. And you’ll notice that while before, 120 people clicking an email was 4% click-through rate but with the dead weight gone, the number moves to 10%. This is encouraging and will improve your mood and drive to move forward.
Create Conversion-ready Emails with HubSpot’s Free Email Tool
Nobody likes to receive generic marketing emails. Using the contact insights stored in your free HubSpot CRM, you can get more of your emails opened and links clicked when you tailor each email to each subscriber. With HubSpot’s free email tool, you can use the drag-and-drop editor to build and send personalized emails in minutes.
You can use an email subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls-to-action. Powered within the free HubSpot CRM, you’ll get access to valuable contact insights, so you can deliver personalized emails your recipients will love.
