What is list hygiene?
As the name suggests, list hygiene is the practice of keeping only valid and active email addresses in an email list.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What are the benefits of practicing good list hygiene?
The biggest benefits of practicing good list hygiene are:
- Increased open rates
- Increased click-through rates and engagement
- Reduced risk of getting blocked or being flagged for spam
- Lower bounce rates
Let us go over each one in more detail:
First, when you ensure that your email list only consists of valid and engaged email addresses, the open rate of your emails go up as a result—which, in turn, leads to our next benefit: increased click-through rates and engagement.
Of course, when you have more people opening your emails, your odds of getting replies, forwards, and conversions also go up.
The third benefit of practicing good list hygiene is that it minimises your risk of being flagged for spam or completely blocked by recipients who do not actually want to receive communication from you anymore (or to begin with).
Finally, when you only have valid and engaged email addresses on your list, you dramatically reduce your bounce rates, which, in turn, minimises your risk of being blacklisted by mail servers and ISPs.
Question #2: How do I practice good list hygiene?
The easiest way to practice good list hygiene is to do everything automatically using whatever email service provider you have. All it takes is the creation of filters designed to automatically identify and delete unengaged and invalid recipients from your list.
But before you start deleting email addresses from your list, there are a couple of things you need to take note of:
First, do not remove recipients from your list just because their email addresses bounced once. It is possible that it was just because of a temporary issue with their email service provider and not a sign that they do not want to receive communication from you anymore. The idea is to instead focus on email addresses that bounce all the time.
Second, it is also not a good idea to not remove recipients from your list just because they did not engage with your most recent emails. It is possible that your most recent content was not relevant to or interesting enough for them. The idea is to instead concentrate on those who have consistently been ignoring you for at least half a year.
Question #3: Is practicing good list hygiene always a good idea?
Yes, practicing good list hygiene is always a good idea as long as you do it properly.
Again, the goal is not to instantly remove people from your list just because they ignored a couple of your emails or their email addresses bounced once or twice. Instead, the idea is to zero in on the ones who are either permanently unengaged or have actual invalid email addresses.
In addition, you should also make it a point to only let people who are actually interested to hear from you in to your email list. This would make the process of keeping your list clean so much easier.
Question #4: Is there a way to salvage unengaged recipients to improve my list hygiene?
Yes, there are several ways to salvage unengaged recipients to improve your list hygiene, including
- Presenting them with exclusive offers
- Asking what they want to see more of
- Asking if they still want to be a part of the list
Let us go over each one in more detail:
First, one of the most effective ways to engage inactive recipients is to send them some kind of special offer, reward, or exclusive content.
The second way is to simply ask your inactive recipients for feedback and suggestions so you know exactly what kind of content they want to see more of in the future.
The third way is to simply ask them if they still want to be a part of your list.
Of course, if you try these techniques and still get no response from your inactive recipients, then you will have to take them off your email list.
To know more on why is email list hygiene important, check this blog from Keap.com.