Blog

We’re moving right through springtime here in the northern hemisphere, which means if you haven’t done your cleaning yet, it’s time to start - and that includes online cleaning. Sure, cleaning your inbox is a great accomplishment, but even more important is cleaning out your email newsletter mailing list. After all, email marketing has to be permission-based tong.  There’s a special four letter word that starts with ‘s’ that we use to describe emailing marketing sends that go to recipients that didn’t sign up for them. 

1. Gather Your Data
Head on over to your stats and take a look at how things are going.  Export any lists you may need (hard and soft bounces, for example) If you need a refresher course on how to interpret all that data, try Andrew D’s Stat Central posts:  Play the Numbers, Clicks Count, Soft Bounce Speed Bumps, The Big Donut, Coming and Going. 

2.  Do the Easy Sweep
Go ahead and delete all email addresses that permanently fail.  Now, check out your soft bounces.  If you try a second time and don’t get through, it’s time to toss those as well.

3.  Remove all Inactive Subscribers
If a reader hasn’t opened your newsletters in six month, chances are pretty good that they won’t open one again.  Here’s a great tutorial from the Knowledge Base for MNB Users to remove inactive subscribers.

4.  Re-Organize Your List
Now is a great time to update your subscriber categories.  Make an up-to-date assessment of the types of emails that you send out and then make sure that you’re segmenting accordingly.  If you’re making big changes, send out a brief email newsletter to readers letting them know about your new structure and remind them that they can change their subscription preferences at any time by clicking on the “preferences” link in your header or footer.

Having a clean subscriber list is an essential for deliverability. We’ll talk more about the ins-and-outs of landing emails in inboxes over the next few weeks.  Stay Tuned!