Marketing teams live in a world of data, reporting, user intent, and audience personas. They have to balance how they spend their time and where to focus their efforts. So why do so many marketers not take the time to make email marketing simpler and cleaner? Let’s dive into why it’s so important to keep your email list clean.
How a Clean Email List Improves Marketing Efforts
Every marketer worth their salt knows that accurate data is king. That’s right — clean data trumps content. A company could have the most amazing idea for an email campaign, but if they cannot accurately measure the results, then how would they know it’s working?
When somebody gets an email from a brand, there are only a handful of actions they can take.
- Ignore the email
- Delete the email
- Open the email but take no action
- Open the email and click on the call to action
- Mark as spam or unsubscribe
Measuring how users engage with an email is the only way marketers can learn from their mistakes and their successes. By tracking email open rate, brands can learn what subject lines drive their users to engage with a message. By tracking click-through rates, they can learn which approaches, design, and call-to-action are most likely to lead users to take the desired action. Now when an email list has not been kept up over time, this data becomes harder to interpret. And without clean data, email campaigns are just that much harder to master.
How to Maintain a Clean Email List
First off, it’s important to define an “active customer.” The marketing team should consider how many emails they send in a month, the nature of the email campaign, and the open rate threshold for an “active customer.” The customers who do not meet the criteria to be considered an “active customer” should be put in a separate list in your database. The secondary list should not be deleted, but rather only utilized for important email blasts and updates. Teams can also craft a message to their “inactive customers” to try and re-engage them or gauge their interest in the brand’s messaging. It’s important to mention that the messages may be going to their spam folders and if they are interested in seeing the emails regularly, they should adjust their email settings.
Building a Clean Email List
Now that we have discussed how a marketing team can define an “active customer” and clean up their email list, let’s move on to growing a clean email list by attracting the right customers.
- Offer Incentive
Contests and giveaways are a great way to attract new customers. However, if the brand is related to real estate, then it’s not a great idea to give away an iPad. Everybody wants an iPad, not just those interested in real estate. So, brands need to think about what type of contest or giveaway would attract their desired audience.
- Create Segments
If a marketing team is going after a few different types of customer, then they should divide the email list by persona and send each list different emails. For instance, a company that does residential and commercial work needs to send out different messaging to the different audiences.
- Go Offline
Hosting or taking part in offline, in-person events, is a great way to engage with customers. Then the team should reach out to those new customers quickly, while they can still remember the encounter clearly.
Ultimately, a good campaign is about the people running it. By maintaining a clean email list, monitoring data, testing different headlines and copy, and thinking outside the box, a marketing team can create a meaningful experience for its customers and clients.
