#2: Manage Your Email List

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manage your email list

Don’t buy lists! As we’ve already mentioned, it’s generally a bad idea to buy lists. Purchasing an email list virtually guar-antees high complaints and potential spam trap hits. If you still decide to purchase lists despite this recommen-dation, then make sure that you know:

(1) How the list was acquired (and confirm they even have the right to rent/sell the list),

(2) Age and last use of the data - and a sample of the last message what was sent to them,

(3) How they monitor and maintain complainers,

(4) How they handle bounces, and

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Manage Your Email List

(5) How they manage the optin status of the subscribers.

b. Always warm up new IPs If your’e planning on really building an email strategy for the long haul, a little bit of patience goes a long way.

It’s key to warm up your IP addresses, and to do so the right way. When you’re warming up IPs, send to small batches, of your most recently engaged sub-scribers and consistently increase over the next few days/weeks.

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Don ‘t use deceptive subject lines

TIP: Avoid (or minimize) HTML in your emails. Be sure to review after each campaign and remove bad addresses, and monitor com-plaints to identify potential problems. C. Process bounces Make sure that you remove hard bounces (bad addresses) immediately and keep them below 2

-3% of your total campaign. This is why starting with recently engaged subscribers is recommended during the warm up.

Monitor bounces and take immediate action on any issues regularly. If necessary, change email practices accordingly.

D. Focus on engagement Segment subscribers by both their own “stated” preferences as well as their actual behavior. In other words, send them the types of emails they’ve requested and watch their behaviors to confirm their actual behavior models what they say. If someone hasn’t opened a message in 3 to 6 months, roll out a re-engagement campaign. If they don’t engage after 5-7 attempts, remove them from your list and consider re-engaging them through an offline campaign instead.

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Quality over quantity is KEY I know what you’re thinking... but if I keep mailing, then maybe SOME offer

will grab their attention. While that may be true, though unlikely, with ISPs using en-gagement metrics more

and more to determine inbox placement, you simply can’t afford to employ this tactic anymore.

To get access to helpful tools and recommended resources that will help you improve your email

deliverability, visit www.EmailDelivered.com/blog/email-deliverability-best-practices

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