Keeping Your Email List Clean

So you think you have a targeted mailing list, a great offer and a compelling call to action?

All the elements of successful email marketing depend on one factor -- having valid email addresses on your list. If you have already started building your mailing list, make sure you have valid email addresses.

Too many people have been victims of email spamming and they have found ways to protect themselves from getting annoying, irrelevant emails. In case you do not know, there are actually throw away freebie e-mail accounts on the Internet. These are e-mail accounts your prospects can only receive e-mail at but cannot send out e-mail from. What’s more: your prospects don't even have to sign up for them! Emails that go to these fake email accounts are automatically deleted every couple of hours.

Why do your prospects use these false e-mail addresses?

Well, they are just avoiding being bombarded with future emails from you. As an honest online marketer you definitely do not want your prospects to sign up for your permission-based email lists using a bogus email address!

Fake email addresses can cause problems in your database, that’s why it is important to keep your email mailing list clean, because when you send an email to these fake email addresses, these emails bounce and return, wasting your bandwidth and your time. So clean up your database and retain the value of your mailing list by keeping it clean and free of fake, invalid email addresses.

So how do you keep your mailing list clean and up-to-date? Here are a few things you should do:
1. Check if you have bad, undeliverable email addresses before you send your emails.
2. Try using email validation software so that you can exclude the bad email addresses from your list.
3. Delete those who have un-subscribed from your list.
4. Before sending out emails, search for people who un-subscribed from your previous emails and delete them from your database.
5. Make sure your list is updated, always provide an option for subscribers to change their email address.

Now, some of you might be contemplating about buying email lists?

Unless it’s from a reputable list company, avoid buying or renting lists. Most email addresses in their lists are probably collected by website email extractors, what’s more, you don’t know these people in the list and most likely they won’t welcome an email from you. Try using the double opt-in subscription method, this will give you the assurance that you have a valid email address and that the prospect really does want to receive mail from you.

In marketing with email list building, you should make it a point to regularly and consistently check your business email lists for invalid addresses. Your goal is to have a clean, accurate opt-in email list, so be sure to clean your list.

E-mail is an effective and relatively cheap marketing tool to attract repeat customers, but make sure your lists are clean, and you get your money’s worth for your email list campaign.