Email marketing is an incredibly powerful marketing tool, often referred to as “The money is in the list”. Businesses rely on email marketing to engage with their target audience and boost revenue.
The return on investment (ROI) for email campaigns is generally outstanding, with an average return of $36 for every dollar spent. If executed correctly, the ROI can be even higher.
Nonetheless, not every email marketing technique is equally effective and some could have adverse effects. If email campaigns are not executed properly, there might be no ROI at all. There is, in fact, one email marketing strategy that companies must avoid at all times.
In this article, we will delve into this strategy, and its negative impacts, and suggest alternative approaches that can help you interact with your email subscribers successfully and attain your marketing objectives.
Therefore, if you are seeking to enhance your email marketing skills and circumvent common mistakes, continue reading to learn more.
The Email Marketing Strategy to Avoid
Neglecting to frequently clean your email list can have a considerable negative impact on your email marketing strategy. I have observed this error happening frequently, regardless of the size of the email list.
To increase your open rates and clicks, it is essential to scrub your email list by removing the records of non-engaging subscribers. However, this should not only increase the percentage of opens but also the total number of opens and clicks, even if your list size becomes smaller.
It is crucial to acknowledge that not all subscribers will show interest in your emails, and repeatedly sending messages to disengaged subscribers can have serious consequences.
Not Cleaning the Email List is a MISTAKE
Not cleaning your email list can be a big mistake for several reasons.
Firstly, sending emails to disinterested or inactive subscribers can increase the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam. This can lead to your entire email list being penalized or even blacklisted by email service providers. This, in turn, can reduce the effectiveness of your future email campaigns.
Secondly, having a large number of inactive subscribers on your email list can significantly impact your email metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. These metrics are important for measuring the success of your email campaigns.
Having a low engagement rate can negatively affect your email deliverability and sender reputation.
Finally, maintaining a clean email list helps ensure that your emails reach the right audience. It is essential for achieving your desired results.
You can focus your email campaigns on your most engaged and interested subscribers when you regularly remove inactive or disengaged subscribers from your list. This eventually results in higher engagement rates and better overall results.
Why You Should Clean Your Email List
Cleaning your email list is an essential practice for achieving better email marketing results. Here are some reasons why you should clean your email list:
- Improved Deliverability
A clean email list ensures that your emails reach the right audience, which can improve your email deliverability. This reduces the likelihood of your emails bouncing back or being marked as spam.
- Better Engagement Rates
A clean email list also helps improve your engagement rates. By focusing on your most engaged subscribers, you can tailor your messaging and offers to their specific needs and preferences. This can result in higher open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
- Cost Savings
Maintaining a clean email list can also help you save costs on your email marketing campaigns. By removing inactive or disengaged subscribers, you can reduce your email-sending volume. This can lead to lower email marketing costs.
Additionally, a clean email list can also improve your email metrics and increase the return on investment (ROI) of your email campaigns.
Effect of Not Cleaning Your Email List
Let me give you a real-life example to show how crucial it is to have a clean email list.
Neil Patel started email marketing with his blog, QuickSprout, which focused on marketing. As his subscribers grew to over 28,000 contacts, his open rate decreased from 20% to as low as 10%. This result is despite getting new subscribers.
Patel mentioned that couldn’t figure out why this was happening until he realized that email platforms like Outlook and Gmail have their own algorithms.
When you send emails to a thousand people, and a hundred of them never open them. The algorithm considers the hundred disengaged subscribers as a potential threat, making your email more likely to be marked as spam.
As a result, some of the emails sent to the remaining 900 people could end up in their spam or promotions tab. Even if they didn’t click on the spam or promotions button.
Accordingly, it is crucial to ensure that you only send emails to engaged subscribers. This is to avoid negative impacts on your overall clicks and open rates.
Having a clean email list ensures that your emails reach the right audience and can significantly improve your email deliverability, engagement rates, and overall campaign performance.
How to Clean Email List
To ensure that your emails are reaching the right audience and driving engagement, it’s important to regularly clean your email list. Here are some tips on how to do it:
- Segment your subscribers: Categorize your subscribers based on their engagement level, such as those who haven’t opened or clicked on your emails in the last 90 days. This will help you identify inactive subscribers who can be removed or targeted with a re-engagement campaign.
- Remove invalid email addresses: Eliminate any email addresses that are invalid, bounced, or have high spam complaints.
- Remove duplicate email addresses: Check for and remove any duplicate email addresses in your list.
- Run a re-engagement campaign: Create a special email series to target inactive subscribers and encourage them to re-engage with your brand. Offer them something valuable, such as an exclusive discount or access to premium content.
- Keep your list updated: Regularly update your email list by adding new subscribers and removing inactive ones. This will ensure that your list stays healthy and effective in reaching your target audience.
Tools to Use in Email Marketing
Regularly scrubbing your list is necessary, and various email tools can help, such as ConvertKit.
ConvertKit is an email marketing software designed for bloggers, podcasters, and other creators. It provides features for managing email lists, creating and sending emails, and automating email sequences.
ConvertKit also offers segmentation options to help creators send targeted messages to different groups of subscribers based on their behavior or interests. It aims to help creators grow and engage with their email list and build relationships with their audience through email marketing.
This platform segments cold subscribers who haven’t engaged in the last 30 days. You can either delete these subscribers or put them on a re-engagement campaign with an irresistible offer to try and get them to re-engage.
Afterward, you can delete the subscribers who are still cold and don’t care and put the ones that started to re-engage back into your main list. By doing so, you can ensure that your emails get delivered to people’s inboxes, and you can achieve great success with email marketing.
Neglecting to keep your email list clean can have grave consequences for your email marketing efforts. Although it may seem counterintuitive, deleting inactive subscribers can improve your email list’s quality and boost engagement rates with those genuinely interested in your content.
