Protecting Your Investment by Maintianing Your Email List

Building your email marketing subscriber base is only the first challenge. Maintaining a clean, responsive, opt-in list of subscribers is the next hurdle. In my last post, I spoke about how to effectively grow your list. Now you need to understand how to make sure your list continues to remain effective and producing results.

As I mentioned in my last post, each year you can expect your list to erode up to 30% based on your subscribers changing their email address. This holds true regardless of whether your focus is on B2B or B2C. Bounce management will help you drastically reduce that rate.

If you are having challenges with your subscribers losing interest and effectively causing your list to become stale, check out how to turn that around by reading more about active vs. inactive subscribers.

BOUNCE MANAGEMENT
Most, if not all email marketing platforms provide tracking on the deliverability of your email sends. The report should give you a breakdown of which emails were delivered and which emails did not. In the simplest form, there are two reasons why an email was not delivered to your subscriber.

Soft Bounces - One general category for a bounced email is the soft bounce. This means that the email address is valid, however there was something that caused your email to not get through to the subscribers inbox. Examples of this type of bounce are the mailbox was full, the server was down, your email was blocked by a SPAM filter, and so on.

When you receive a soft bounce message several times consecutively (each platform has a different rule for this. The range can be anywhere from 3 – 5 times) on a subscribers email address, the platform you are using will most likely flag the email as undeliverable and it will be blocked from receiving additional emails.

You can stay on top of this erosion by reviewing this list every 3 to 6 months. Place a call to the subscriber notifying them of the issue and asking them, first of all if they are still interested in receiving your emails and secondly if they have added your marketing email address to their “Safe Senders” list. If you are using an email marketing platform that provides you with a detailed definition of the reason for the soft bounce, then you are able to more easily determine what needs to be done to solve the issue of your emails bouncing and if it is even worth placing that call.

For example, if the response you receive from a subscriber multiple times is “mailbox full” then it will not help to add your email address to their Safe Senders list. The message would be more along the lines of determining if the subscriber would like to use a different email address to receive your emails.

Hard Bounces - The other category is the basic hard bounce which means the email address is not valid. The exception to this definition is when an email browser or SPAM filter returns a “fake” hard bounce. Again, most email marketing platforms will either segment your hard bounced emails into a list, or just flag the emails as such and block them from being sent additional emails.

Staying on top of this list is a similar process, but can be done much more frequently and the conversation is always going to be the same. “We noticed that your email address has gone bad and we wanted to make sure you could still benefit from receiving our emails. Do you have a new emails address you would like us to send them to?” Update the record with the correct email address and get them back on the list.

ACTIVE vs. INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS
The basic objective with every email marketing campaign whether it is for brand awareness or to drive sales is to always drive the subscriber to take some sort of action. This is the only way you are going to be able to measure success or failure of your campaigns… right? I would disagree. Subscribers will not always unsubscribe from your list when they are not interested in your emails anymore. They will just stop reading them. To determine how effect your email marketing efforts are over the long run, you need to factor in how “inactive” your subscribers have become.

Define what active subscriber means to you. For example, I will define active subscribers as subscribers who will at least open your emails and click on a link once every 3 months. Depending on the frequency of your messaging and the content you are sending, this definition could be greatly altered. So, find the right set of rules to determine what an active subscriber is for your purpose.

Once you have defined what an active subscriber is for you, everyone else is now considered inactive. For one reason or another, they have stopped interacting with your company. You have lost your relevancy with them, you have annoyed them with too many messages, you have done something, or not enough to keep them interacting with you.

So, what do you do with the email subscribers who have become inactive? At this point you are wasting your time blasting away at them hoping for some activity. Inactive subscribers need to be segmented and messaged to differently with a campaign focused on reengaging with them. Pulling the inactive subscriber out of your main campaigns on a regular basis will also give you much cleaner reporting.

You can learn just as much from your inactive subscribers as you could from your active subscribers. One way to accomplish this is to let the subscriber rest for a few cycles and then send them a survey. Your message needs to be focused on the importance of your relationship with the subscriber. Let them know that you miss them and offer them some incentive to complete the survey. The survey needs to give them the opportunity to tell you why they are not engaging and comment on what they would like to see or what would get them interested again. Give them options to change their preferences including the ability to receive less email from you… even the option to opt-out all together.

Just like staying on top of the oil changes and scheduled maintenance on your vehicle, setting rules around how to handle bounce management and inactive subscribers up front (and of course, following those rules) will help to protect your investment. It also does not hurt to get a nice coat of wax on it once and a while… so, let me know how I can help you add that extra shine to your campaigns with future posts.

Common - Creative... Building your Lists More Effectively

One of the biggest assets for the email marketer is their opt-in list of email addresses. Every year up to 30% of the emails on your list will become invalid emails. Building your list and staying on top of the list erosion can be a struggle. There are very common sense things that need to be in place to capture email address. But, many of these tactics will just keep you ahead of the erosion curve.

Some of the most common and maybe not so common ways companies are building their email lists are…

• Website sign-up form… Hint, make sure it is on every page of your site.
• Adding a forward to a friend link in all your email messages
• Adding a link to sign-up in transactional email messages.
• Require email address for downloading white papers from your site with the option to opt-in
• POS registration options
• Add a message to visit the site and opt-in on the in-store receipts
• Opt-in during the online shopping process
• Customer facing employees need to be asking for the clients emails
• Run contests or sweepstakes
• Don’t forget to promote the website sign-up on all direct mail pieces
• Tradeshow fishbowl with opt-in message
• Bag stuffers promoting the sign-up

If you really want to GROW your list, then you need to start thinking outside of the box and use some creativity. Below are a few examples of the creative ways some companies are using to build their email lists that I felt deserved more than a bullet.

Bounced Email List Append: One way to stay on top of your emails gone bad is to take all those hard bounced emails and see if you can find out their new email address. The company I work for has been doing this successfully for years. Every six months or so, pull the list of your hard bounced emails and append new emails to them. Then send a re-engagement message to them asking them if they would still like to be part of the list. We have seen an average of 30 – 35% of the hard bounce list opting back into the campaign.

Leverage Another Companies Email List: Now I am not suggesting that you send a message to another companies list. However, think about advertising your company in an email message sent from another company. Make sure you choose the company that is messaging to your target audience, of course. This can be accomplished many ways. There could be the opportunity to sponsor the message, buy advertising space, write an article that is featured in the message, and many others. This will drive additional traffic back to your site and hopefully drive more opt-ins.

SMS Technology: Providing someone the opportunity to join your email marketing list by texting their email address to a short code is another fantastic way to build your list. An example of this is to have a sign at the checkout line at a retail store that says “TEXT JOIN {youremail} to {short code} now to begin receiving special offers via email. You can even send them an immediate coupon back to use right there at the register! Now someone can join while they wait in line. They do not have to remember to visit your site when they get home or have time. You do not have to rely on the checkout person to remember to ask for the email address.

Not all of these ideas are going to be appropriate for your business. Some are going to be more effective than others depending on your industry.

Finally, I wanted to give you some advice when thinking about capturing email addresses on your website. Ask for only the information you REALLY need when someone is first signing up for your emails. Asking for a bunch of information when registering will be too overwhelming for some people. Reduce the number of fields you are requiring and you will increase the number of people opting in.

Bonus Tip: Interesting Way to Test Subject Lines!

I am sure you all are aware that I am always on the lookout for new and innovative ideas on improving email marketing results. While on Twitter yesterday, I noticed a post by @mmallin which stated, "Twitter's probably a great place to test different subject lines for email marketing campaigns." At the time, I thought not a bad idea and I retweeted the message. Then a few questions came back to me about how this would be accomplished. So, I feel like this deserves more attention then 140 characters to share my thoughts.

One of the common uses for Twitter is to send links to your Followers to read an article, join a webinar, etc.. The challenge is always to provide a good call to action message that will get the Followers interested in clicking on the link you provided. This is the same challenge all email marketers face when writing a subject line. Twitter is a great place to hone your skills in this area.

Tracking the effectiveness of these messages is the next obstacle. If you have insight into the web analytics for the site you are sending them to, or you have visibility into the registration activity for a webinar you have invited Followers to, then it makes things a bit easier... but not perfect. For example, send a tweet with one message. Wait a day. Check the site traffic. Send another tweet with a completely different message but same objective. Which one performed better for you.

Now let's take it up a notch... By using your email marketing platform, send a message to just yourself with different tracking links for the same destination. Copy those links into different tweets with different messages you would like to test. The effectiveness of those clicks can be seen in real time within your email marketing platform. Whichever performs better, use it in the "real" message to your subscribers... Make sense? Great... Now take advatage of this idea to polish up those subject lines!

Thanks to Michael Mallin @mmallin for this idea. If you use this idea with success, I want to hear about it. If you have questions or other great ideas, share them with everyone by commenting on this post.

Tomorrows Post: Effective ways to build your lists without purchasing emails