Email Marketing

Email data hygiene is entirely an integral for your email marketing campaign’s success. Through proper email data hygiene, brands can take full advantage of the power of the inbox. This article discusses tips that you might miss out on when working on a routine email marketinghygiene check-up.

Email extended its role as the most efficient digital channel this year when buyers shifted from in-store shopping to ecommerce and the open and click rates ticked up. Higher list attrition rates and inbox filtering and leads to lower ROI. 

Email Data Hygiene Makes the Difference

As we mentioned earlier, you have to reach your subscriber’s email inboxes to succeed. Unfortunately, corrupt email addresses can get in the way. These insufficient email data may come from outside your database when readers unintentionally or knowingly make typos or use fake emails. 

But they’re also a ticking time bomb in your database as useful addresses can decay, becoming out-of-date and even putting your deliverability at danger from spam traps.

Email data hygiene helps you identify these issues before they create more problems and then go upstream to explore the sources that brought those into your environment. You’ll raise deliverability and encourage positive engagement and good revenue to flourish your business. 

How does it Matter Even More Today

Email data hygiene has become even more critical than it was just a few months ago. Indeed, the stakes have never been such high. If you increased your sending volume and touched deeper into your files to reach as many consumers as possible and maximize your email marketingcampaign reach and impact, you aren’t alone.

But this opens the door to risky email addresses that can harm your email marketingprogram beyond repair. Wrong addresses are on the increase thus makes things more challenging, 

Email data filtering is a growing concern for marketers and entrepreneurs because of the vast increase in sending volume since March. That’s another reason you must concentrate on the quality and not the number of email addresses you send. Besides these deliverability concerns, more bounces indicate higher email list attrition rates.

List Attrition: The Obvious and Hidden Costs

Attrition is a concern as it occurs at a much higher rate. Email data lists decay at an average annual rate of almost 22.5% to 30% each year. Fresh Address saw invalids rise to nearly 37.8% from 2019 to 2020.

Besides the deliverability concerns that can emerge when a high percent of your email marketing campaigns bounce at significant ISPs, attrition takes a massive bite out of your acquisition budget. After all, you’re spending money to obtain addresses when you offer incentives for opting in.

Also, every email data has monetary worth. Even if it’s as less as 50 cents per subscriber, it can add up fast if you have to replace one-third or more from your list each year.

Steps to Control Attrition 

There’s no button you can push to organize your email database. But the email marketing or email data filtering efforts you put now to reduce attrition will pay off promptly as we move into the all-crucial vacation shopping season and then on into 2021.

Here are the top steps that can help you get there:

  • Understand your audience

Acquire as much email data as you can so that you understand what your consumers want from your brand and how they communicate with your email.

Include short surveys and polls to your email marketing campaigns to find out what’s on their minds. Maintain consistency in your email frequency and flow.

Provide a preference center – and make it simple for subscribers to use.

Out of sight is out of mind!

  • Watch activity like a hawk

Your dashboard may sometimes appear a little unusual but provides significant activity metrics of your email marketing campaign. Check it during and after you send an email marketing campaign and track results to check if they’re trending up or down.

  • Reconnect With ECOA

When your emails are sent to the spam folder without your knowledge, or a subscriber switched email providers and didn’t update you. When email change of address is done responsibly, it can encourage you to reconnect with those subscribers who you lost but are still interested in your brand. 

  • Be Creative

Provide your consumers with plenty of reasons to open and act on your emails. Invest in engaging, up-to-date templates, and modify your messages, so they see more than a relentless drumbeat to buy, buy, and buy.

Final Thoughts

Email data matters more today, but it operates only if your email marketing campaigns reach your target inbox. Wrong email addresses – disposables, fakes, invalids, and other bad players – get in your way, and you must deal with them efficiently and quickly before the high-volume vacation shopping season starts underway.