Spring has sprung, which means it’s time for spring cleaning. When was the last time you cleaned up your email database?  

Maintaining your email database is crucial to the success of your email marketing campaigns. In fact, if you’re not maintaining your email lists, you could lose one-third of your list each year due to bounces, unsubscribes, and address changes.  

Cultivating a list of engaged users takes time, but you can help yourself by following a few simple best practices.  

Perform regular maintenance

First, you may be wondering how to tell if your database is in need of a cleanup. Ask yourself three key questions:  

1. When was the last time you reviewed and cleaned up your database?  
2. Are your email engagement rates decreasing? 
3. Is there an increase in bounces, unsubscribes, and/or spam complaints for seemingly no reason? 

All email databases are in need of a regular cleanup. As your database grows, so will the number of bad email addresses—it’s just the “cost of doing business” for email marketers. You should do a quarterly cleaning (at least). 

For the second and third question, if you answered “yes” to either, then you probably have a dirty database. Remember that while quantity is important, it shouldn’t be at the cost of quality. Ensure each person receiving your emails actually wants to be on your list—it will benefit you both in the long-run.  

Activate re-engagement campaigns 

Re-engagement email campaigns are another key step in keeping your email database healthy.  

Do you have contacts that used to engage with your emails, but they’re now inactive? Set up a re-engagement campaign to remove email addresses that have “gone dark.” 

In order to do so, the first email in your campaign should be an “Are you there?” email. With this email, you’re making sure the contact you’re sending it to still exists and still wants to receive your messages. Include a “yes” and “no” CTA to make it easier for the person to stay opted-in or remove themselves.  

Should they choose to remain on your email list, enroll them in a nurture campaign to try to move them down the sales funnel. If they opt out, promptly remove them from your database. It doesn’t benefit your brand to send emails to someone who’s uninterested. At best, it’s annoying to the user. At worst, it can lead to spam complaints, or even lawsuits for not complying with unsubscribe requests. 

Revise your lists continuously 

Email lists should be ever-evolving. While you may do a formal cleanup quarterly, you can make these easier by regularly maintaining your list throughout the year. For example, if your email platform doesn’t automatically remove hard bounces, remove them immediately and often—it will make these quarterly cleanups easier, and help you from sending email content into a digital void.  

There are also email validation services like ZeroBounce or BriteVerify you can invest in to help ensure the email addresses users provide are legitimate. These services will scrub your email database for fake or inactive emails. They can also be incorporated into opt-in forms to ensure the emails being entered are real and active at the point of entry.  

Begin realizing ROI 

With 92% of online adults using email, email marketing can be one of the most useful tactics for marketers. However, email marketing is only as strong as the contact lists you’re delivering to.  

Maintaining a clean database requires regular upkeep, but these efforts will strengthen your overall email marketing program. In general, buying an email list is not considered a best practice—and is often against your email service provider’s (ESP’s) terms of use—so it’s best to formulate a process and cadence that ensures the content you’re delivering is not only being received, but is being delivered to the people who are most interested in it.  

Utilize tools that can help validate email addresses, re-engage users, and scrub fake or inactive emails from your list. By ensuring you’re delivering content to the right users, you’ll be able to realize the true ROI of your email marketing campaign. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how to optimize your email marketing campaigns, take a look at Acoustic Campaign or schedule a discussion with us today.