6 Common Myths About
Email List Management
Better list, better result.
Webbula is fortunate to have clients who are
movers, shakers, go-getters, innovators, and
all around top-notch professionals in diverse
fields. Sometimes it’s hard for such
high-caliber companies to admit they need
help. Email marketing seems concrete and
manageable on the surface: Simply learn what
the threats are, identify them, and remove
them from your list. That all sounds
reasonable. (And so do the six myths we’ll
address below.)
The problem, however, is that managing your
email list is an ongoing process that involves
ever-changing technology and new threats
appearing almost daily. It’s tough to stay ahead
of trouble. Enlisting the help of a hygiene and
verification specialist can preserve your
sender reputation, improve campaign results,
and boost revenues. As an added bonus, your
team will be free to do whatever super
innovative mover-shaker things you do best.
There you have it.
List hygiene for a better campaign.
In this white paper, you’ll discover six
common email myths and how they
could affect your deliverability and
sender reputation. You’ll also see how
hygiene and verification can improve
the quality of your list and boost your
revenues. Read on to learn how to:
identify and eliminate threats
from your email list
free up resources to focus on
your core competencies
improve deliverability and
revenues
avoid the dreaded blacklist
complement your current email
best practices
make informed decisions for
campaign deployment
The Situation:
It’s tough to stay ahead of email threats...
You’re probably doing a lot right when it comes to your email list. You may
be removing bounces and looking for suspicious addresses. Maybe you only
send to opt-ins and responders. Thanks to enhanced dashboards and
metrics, you know more than ever about who receives, opens, and clicks. But
new threats arise daily, and even the most diligent companies can’t see all
the potential problems lurking in their lists.
Take a look at these six common email myths that could be affecting the
success of your campaigns. Read on to learn how email hygiene and
verification can identify threats, enhance your reputation, and improve
revenues.
Common Email Misconceptions
We know our data and in-house list cleaning
works well.
In-house list cleaning has a few perks because you know your data best, but a data
quality provider knows data even better.
Many marketers believe they can easily recognize a threatening email address. In
reality, a seemingly good email address can present many dangers to your IP and
domain reputation and campaign revenue. Most in-house cleaning processes can’t
recognize and flag threats efficiently, or at all. Entrusting a hygiene and verification
provider allows you to focus on what you do best and increases campaign
deliverability and engagement.
If someone opt-ins, opens, and clicks,
their email address does not pose a threat.
Even an opt-in email address might be a spam trap, a dummy account meant to find
and block spammers. Mailing to opt-ins is a good email practice, but be aware that
spam traps could still receive your email, seeded trackers could open it, and robots
might click. While it is a good idea to examine opens and clicks for smart segmentation
and campaign success, this is not an accurate way of identifying and eliminating threats.
Email hygiene will provide the additional signals necessary to successfully understand
the risk within a list. These powerful hygiene flags form a complete understanding when
overlaid with open and clicker data.
I only mail to my responders, so I don’t have
to worry about email threats in my campaign.
Mailing to responders is a good email practice. However, it is important to
understand that even authentic responders can go stale over time and become
spam traps. Additionally, authentic customers often submit fake email
addresses, known as disposable domains, to avoid email campaigns. Because
disposable domains pose delivery threats to your campaign, it is essential to
recognize and remove them.
Highly exposed emails are also a concern in today’s era of cyber security breaches.
Some security breaches, like the Target data breach, involve millions of stolen email
addresses and personal information. When a valid responder is involved in a data
breach, they often experience a lot of spam in their inbox. The victim begins
reporting spam and becomes a complainer. As a result of
inbox fatigue, the victim then abandons the email
account and starts a new one. Because abandoned
accounts eventually become spam traps, highly exposed
emails pose a threat to your email list. It is essential to
identify and eliminate these threats using email hygiene.
I remove all bounces from my
list, so I’m safe from threats.
Removing bounces from your list is a staple best practice for managing bounce rates.
A more effective method is using a verification company to also identify graylistings,
a spam-prevention method that checks an email address against an approved list.
The unfortunate truth is that identifying bounces and graylistings, whether through
mailings or verification companies, will not protect your campaign and brand from
active threats that are deliverable.
Malicious moles, spam traps, seeded trackers, disposable domains, and other
threats can pass straight through verification processes. New spam traps are
created every day, compromising even your newest responder list. Because it’s
nearly impossible for you to stay ahead of these threats, enlist the help of a
professional for regular list cleaning.
The more email addresses in my list, the
better my campaign ROI.
As marketers we know the value of intelligence in our campaign dashboards.
Metrics and data points crossed with intuition form educated marketing decisions.
Hygiene and verification results should be treated no differently than other signals
on your marketing dashboard. Hygiene and verification flags do not remove data
from your list. Instead, they identify and flag threats in a comprehensive report,
allowing you to make changes as you see necessary. Only you, the list owner, can
make list changes. Rely on hygiene and verification indicators to alert you of
hazards so you can make informed decisions about your campaign deployment
and avoid frustrations down the road.
I’ve been sending to the same email list
and have never been blacklisted.
While you may have never been blacklisted, a ticking time bomb could be waiting in
your list. Disposable emails, for example, are email addresses created with a
predetermined expiration date. These emails create a false sense of security and
will eventually bounce, hurting your reputation as a sender.
Additionally, email addresses (and their owners) change every day. A responder
today can become a complainer or malicious mole tomorrow. Accounts get
abandoned over time as they are solicited repeatedly by other marketers,
ultimately becoming a threat called a recycled trap. A deceased person’s email
account is typically abandoned, wasting your resources and decreasing campaign
key performance indicators.
Emails are like strawberries. One day they are good, and the next day they are
rotten. Because 3-5% of a list goes bad each month on average, running hygiene
regularly will mitigate your exposure to these sticky situations. Learn from the
mistakes of many blacklisted businesses and retailers, like Gap and Gilt. As a result
of a hygiene and verification email strategy, you can experience increased
engagement metrics in your campaigns instead of worrying about the blacklist.
The Solution:
Search and destroy email threats
Cleaning and verifying your email list will improve campaign deliverability
and revenue. Verification identifies inactive emails and validates if an email
is deliverable. Since many threats are deliverable, it is essential to also run
hygiene to identify deliverable threats in active emails.
Cleaning and verifying your list will not compromise or delete your current
email list. Instead, you’ll receive hygiene and verification reports along with a
list of suggested corrections. The hygiene report segments email
addresses according to their threat category. The verification report
segments email addresses according to deliverability.
To The Rescue!
Hygiene and verification are not only great practices in your
email strategy, they are necessary to ensure deliverability,
positive sender reputation, and email hazard protection.
Webbula CloudHygiene provides a comprehensive bundled
approach to real-time hygiene and verification.
+1 (888) 993-2285
[email protected]
“As our industry evolves clients have to rely on data integrity and
quality to ensure their clients digital journey commences with trust.
Webbula has ensured that our clients are secure in the knowledge
that when their data is analyzed and combined with permissions and
preferences it will perform exceeding expectations. If you are in the
market for great products, great team and great service you would be
amiss not to consider Webbula.”
- David Fowler, Chief Privacy & Digital Compliance Officer at Act-On Software
About the Author: Meet Melissa
Melissa Ott is Webbula’s fearless VP of marketing. She creates online and
offline marketing programs and engages deeply with new and existing
customers across channels. Melissa’s prior experience includes marketing
program and operations management, most recently at WESCO
Distribution. Her business-to-business marketing experience and
enthusiasm drive the Webbula brand in the data technology space. Melissa
holds an MBA from Robert Morris University and a B.A. in public relations
and advertising from Duquesne University. She’s earned numerous
certifications in project management and LEAN Six Sigma.