Definition
💡 Email list cleaning is the practice of removing undesirable mail addresses from a contact list. This practice is useful for anyone who regularly communicates with a group of people via email, including small business owners, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and individuals managing personal mailing lists.
Example
George, who manages an online comic shop's newsletter, noticed that his monthly open rates had been declining. He decided to clean his email list of 10,000 subscribers using a specialized tool. After removing nearly 700 addresses, the performance of his newsletter improved significantly.
Why do I need to do email list cleaning?
Email list cleaning should be performed for the following reasons:
- Improved deliverability: By removing invalid or inactive addresses, you reduce the likelihood of your emails bouncing or being marked as spam, which can harm your sender reputation.
- Higher open and click-through rates: The success of your email communications is often measured in open and click-through rates. Often, the easiest way to increase these metrics is to get rid of undesirable addresses from your contact list.
- Resource optimization: Some email service providers (especially those who offer bulk messaging services) charge based on the number of contacts in your list. As such, when list cleaning results in, let's say, a 10% leaner mail list, you can save resources and potentially reduce costs.
- More accurate analytics: A clean mail list provides more accurate data on your email performance, as you're only tracking engagement from active and interested recipients.
- Compliance with regulations: Many countries have strict regulations around electronic communications, including rules about how often people can be emailed and requirements for recipients to opt-in to communications. A thorough list cleaning is often helpful in achieving compliance.
Methods of email list cleaning
Email list cleaning methods can be divided into two major categories:
Manual list cleaning
A small business owner with a relatively small mailing list may choose to manually clean their email list. This process involves going through each contact on the list and checking for any inaccuracies, typos, or outdated information. The business owner can also look for any contacts who have not engaged with their emails in a long time and remove them from the list.
Needless to say, manual list cleaning can be very consuming and surprisingly inaccurate (the task gets boring very quickly and attention wanes). Still, its highly cost-effective nature makes it a welcome option for those whose budgets are very tight.
Automated list cleaning
For those with more extensive mail lists, automated list cleaning presents a highly efficient and accurate alternative to manual cleaning. This type of cleaning is performed using specialized software that scans the email list for any invalid, inactive, or duplicate email addresses.
Examples of automated list cleaning software include NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, and Debounce, just to give three examples. Most of these tools even offer API that can be used to integrate real-time mail address verification into the email collection process so that no invalid addresses end up on the mailing list in the first place.
