Do you have an old mailing list?
It’s quite well known that email marketing has an excellent return on investment (ROI). The kicker is, it’s only as good as how clean it is. A messy mailing list can lead to a big bout of issues.
For instance, if you have a list that you haven’t used for a while, it can be very frustrating for both the sender and the receiver. It can come with all kinds of brain aches :)
Keen for the why, the how, the what? First, let me give you some insight into a project that I am currently working on. I have a client who has a huge list, we’re talking 60,0000 people are subscribed to this list.
Most businesses would be thrilled with that turnout; however, as a marketer, hearing this amount on any given email list will send some red flags our way. It’s in our nature to then audit the list to make sure that every single person on this list is a) engaging with your content and b) a real person.
Unfortunately for my client, as they were growing their list, they didn’t use 2FA, so the mailing list is full of spam and bots. 2FA may seem like you are causing someone more friction to subscribe, but believe me, only those who are interested in you will go through the process.
A deathly quiet email list, full of crickets, is not worth a penny. You want to only have engaged subscribers; this can hurt your open rate analytics.
If I used this junk-filled mailing list as it is, what would happen?
Most email marketing services will stop your account from sending if you have several spam or bounces.
They deem it suspicious behaviour, so they stop you from sending out any more emails and suspend your account until you sort it out…cue the brain ache I was going on about in the above!
Not only this, but like a disease, it can affect other areas of your digital footprint too. It’s possible that the domain would be affected by a bad spam score.
When an Internet Service Provider (ISP) sees that you’re sending to a large number of unknown accounts, they will suspect that you are a spammer. If you email unknown accounts at a rate higher than 5%, it is very likely they will send your emails directly to the spam folder or will block you altogether. Which is really of no use to anybody.
What are the steps to sort out an old mailing list?
1. Clean out your list
2. Sign up for a Newsletter Service Provider
3. Authenticate your domain
4. Create your first email and use an email checker before you send it
5. Email your clean list
1. Clean the List
Various services do this. It’s best to check Google to see who is currently the best company to do this for you.
2. Sign up for a Newsletter Service Provider
I recommend Mailerlite and find the platform easy to use and their pricing very reasonable. They are around half the price of Mailchimp. Mailerlite also integrates with most E-Commerce platforms, so you can automate not only your newsletters and welcome sequences, but also your abandoned cart and after-purchase sequences.
For WordPress sites, you can’t go past the value of FluentCRM …I changed over to this a year or so ago, and I haven’t looked back.
By using FluentCRM and ElasticMail, it will cost me $2 per month, whereas Mailerlite is $199 (there is a free version, however, if you’re a growing business, you would have passed the threshold), and Mailchimp will be over $500
3. Authenticate your domain
DKIM and SPF are security protocols that assist with mail deliverability
I further added a DMARC policy to protect their domains from spoofing and phishing email attacks. Each email marketing platform has a different way of doing this, but the crux of the process is finding the DKIM and SPF codes and adding them to your host’s DNS (domain management).
4. Create your first email and use an email checker before you send it
I love this free tool – https://www.mail-tester.com/
It gives you a score so you can check that you have configured things correctly before you send your first email.
5. Send an Email Sequence
I would suggest sending an email sequence of 2-3 emails, more if you have a lot to say. Remember, each sequence should have a purpose. This is a marketing tool, so don’t forget to market your services, your offer or your launch!
Sending a sequence will help with delivery, open rates and clean your list further with unsubscribers who don’t want to be on your mailing list.
A clean list is a healthy list. A healthy list will do your business wonders…don’t knock it till you try it!
Ensure that your list is in working order so you don’t have the headaches that many of my clients had before they came to me.
I hope this post has been helpful!
Until next time
Fractional Tech Partner & Systems Specialist
