Just like anything else in your life, your website or business’ mailing list can become cluttered and require upkeep from time to time to continue working in your best interest. Here are a few mailing list maintenance tips you can use to get a clean email list.
How to Get a Clean Email List
First, you should know that unsubscribers and even people who haven’t confirmed their opt in to your list are still counted as members. This means if you have a number of people who have unsubscribed from your list or never confirmed their subscription in the first place, your number of members will be considerably higher than if you didn’t have those people.
This may not seem like a big deal at first but it matters because most e-mail providers offer different payment tiers depending on how many names you have on your list. More names equals more upkeep, so you pay more money as you get into higher tiers.
Admittedly it’s pretty sneaky to count unsubscribers technically as still being on your mailing list, and the only reason I can see for email software providers to do this is because it sticks you with a higher payment plan.
Because unsubscribers count towards that total, you should routinely make sure to remove them from your list whenever possible to keep your numbers down and representative of only the people who are actually receiving your emails because you obviously don’t want to be paying a higher rate on your e-mail list just because you’ve gone to the next tier by virtue of people who aren’t even receiving your e-mails anymore. Remember, a clean email list is a cheaper list.
Second, you should also remove people who haven’t opted in to your list in 30 days after they sign up initially. A lot of people will try to sign up your list to get your incentive by giving you a bogus e-mail address. The opt in process is entirely optional for you to use as the list owner, but its purpose is to ensure that you only get people who are interested in receiving your e-mails to sign up.
This is another reason for why I like the opt in process or requiring an opt in before your subscriber can receive content or get your incentive; it trims the fat from your list and ensures you only have the most dedicated subscribers on your list who went through that opt in process.
Also important in mailing list maintenance is that you use e-mail analytics properly to recognize your subscribers who aren’t opening the e-mails you are sending. Working with segmenting your list in this way is a smart idea and can identify the subscribers who are not opening your e-mails.
By segmenting this population, you can set aside those who have not been opening your e-mails and you can begin to send them special offers which pertain to your business in the hopes of reinvigorating them and getting them to become an active subscriber once again.
So rather than just removing these members from your list altogether, you can give them one more chance by using segments. If they still don’t respond to what you’re sending them, then you should by all means cut them from your list as again you don’t want unmotivated subscribers pushing your list size potentially into the next tier and costing you an extra fee per month. Social proof is nice, but it may not be worth paying an extra $30 a month for.