Maintaining Email List Hygiene and Deliverability

Maintaining email list hygiene is essential for ensuring high email deliverability and engagement. It involves regularly cleaning and updating your email list to remove invalid, inactive, or problematic addresses, thereby protecting your sender reputation and improving campaign performance.

Key practices for maintaining email list hygiene and deliverability include:

• Use double opt-in and email verification: Require subscribers to confirm their subscription via email to prevent fake or mistyped addresses from entering your list.

• Regularly review and clean your list: After major campaigns, remove invalid addresses, role accounts (e.g., hr@company.com), and obviously fake emails to reduce bounce rates and spam complaints.

• Remove inactive or unengaged subscribers: Implement a sunset policy to identify and suppress or remove contacts who haven’t engaged (opened or clicked) in a set period (e.g., 3 months), which helps improve engagement metrics and deliverability.

• Segment your list based on engagement and demographics: Tailor email frequency and content to different subscriber segments to maintain interest and reduce unsubscribes or spam reports.

• Monitor bounce rates and spam complaints: Quickly address hard bounces (permanent failures) and spam complaints to protect your sender reputation.

• Avoid purchasing email lists: Purchased lists often contain invalid or uninterested contacts, increasing bounce rates and spam complaints.

• Refresh consent and preferences: Periodically confirm subscribers’ consent and update their preferences to ensure compliance and engagement.

• Use tools for deliverability monitoring: Employ inbox placement tests and blacklist monitoring to identify deliverability issues before sending campaigns.

Maintaining a clean, engaged email list is a continuous process, not a one-time task. It forms the foundation for strong domain reputation, better inbox placement, and more effective email marketing campaigns.

In summary, good email list hygiene combines verification, regular cleaning, engagement management, segmentation, and monitoring to maximise deliverability and campaign success.