digital-spring-cleaning

Spring Sending: Time for a Fresh Start

‘Tis spring, and a marketer’s fancy turns to – spring cleaning! Email list cleansing and validation will make all your sends more effective, in all seasons.
Article Outline

For many of us, spring is in full swing and the nice weather is fast approaching. Up here in Oregon, the brief breaks in rain are a good indication that a new season is here. So what does spring usually bring to mind besides sunshine? Cleaning!

Most of us tend to dread the idea of a massive spring cleaning, while others look forward to a fresh start. However, as anyone can attest – after the cleaning is done, it’s a huge relief and you are glad you did it. These same principles that you use in your home can also be applied to your email marketing practice as well.

What sort of things can you do to organize your campaigns, weed out stale or broken programs, and help get rid of clutter in your email marketing campaigns? Below are a few suggestions that should help to provide some well-needed tender loving care for your marketing efforts. (And remember … given all that your email marketing does for your company, it deserves your attention.)

  • Scrub those old addresses collecting “dust” from your lists. These includes the addresses of anyone who hasn’t recently engaged (opened or clicked) with your emails for six months or more. Continuing to send to these email addresses can bring down your delivery rates and contribute to list fatigue.
  • Organize your sends to your recipients. Try some segmentation, and then personalization by segment, and to see how your engagement rates are affected. By catering your messages and subject lines to particular recipients, you will increase your chances of those opens and clicks that could possibly lead to new customers!
  • Refresh your content! If you are selling products or services, try a campaign or offering that is relevant to the season. Relevancy is key, and by catering your message to a specific audience at a specific time of year you make it possible for those engagement rates to increase.
  • Update your preference center to ensure that you are getting unsubscribes out as fast as possible, and make it easy for your recipients to choose the frequency and types of emails they get from you. This can also help to get out old recipients who may be adding to your email clutter.
  • Make sure your bounces are getting disposed of properly. A list cleanse and validation is a good idea during your spring refresh. It can help eliminate risky email addresses and can help to manage your bounces, both hard and soft. Too many hard bounces can cause delivery and reputation issues – and bad lists and reputation can lead to yet more soft bounces and less delivery.

During this spring season, keep these tips in mind as you prepare your campaigns. By running some routine maintenance and spring cleaning on your email lists, campaigns, and content – you’re setting yourself up for success through all four seasons! (Just imagine how good it will feel when you go into a critical holiday campaign with your list clear, clean, primed, and ready.)

But no matter how clean your lists are, the art of successful email marketing depends first and last upon proactive deliverability management. Download, Best Practices in Email Deliverability, to learn the critical factors that affect the deliverability of your email messages.

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