Does Email List Cleaning Help or Hurt Your Bottom Line?

Now that you have a good foundation of how ESP’s measure email deliverability, let’s take a look at the results two companies had after implementing a list cleaning strategy…

Case Study #1

The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development had a 500,000 person email list.

They knew their list was being dragged down by low-quality leads, so they decided to run a re-engagement campaign to clean their list.

This campaign was run 2 times over a 2 year period.

During the first campaign, 240,000 emails were labeled as low quality and put through their re-engagement email series.

Out of the 240,000 emails, 4,000 of them were added back to the main list, and the rest were deleted.

If we do some quick math, that’s 500,000 total email subscribers minus the 240,000 low-quality leads.

That leaves a total email list size of 260,000.

Then we have to add the 4,000 emails that were added back to the main list (4,000+260,000= 264,000). Bringing the total list size back up to 264,000.

The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development stated they were getting an 11% open rate at this time.

If we take the 264,000 emails times it by the 11% open rate, we get 29,040 emails opened.

After 2 years of list cleaning, the company were receiving a 13% open rate. That’s a 2% increase in their open rates.

Doesn’t sound like much huh?

If you take the same list size, they had (264,000) with a 13% open rate instead of 11% you get 34,320 opens.

That’s 5,280 more opens just by getting a 2% bump in open rates.

Case Study #2

JustAnswer is an online service that allows you to speak with experts such as vets, lawyers, doctors, tech support and home improvement.

Their newsletter was receiving a lot of SPAM complaints, so they decided to clean their list to improve email deliverability.

JustAnswer ran a re-engagement campaign to everyone on their list who was not active for the past 90 days.

Only 17% of their email list engaged with their emails over that 90 day period.

They moved the other 83% to a different email list that was on a different IP address.

Tip:

Moving inactive subscribers to a different email account on a different IP address will allow you to continue emailing inactive subscribers without harming your main accounts email sender reputation.

Using a different from name along with this will be even more effective. You can buy different a different domain suffix like .co, .net, .org or whatever else you feel comfortable with.

For example, instead of sending from [email protected] you can send from [email protected] to your inactive subscribers.

After 3 months they got a 207% bump in engagement from their email list, their SPAM complaints reduced by 84%, email open rates increased by 46%, and their click through rates grew by 500%.

Other Benefits To Email List Cleaning

Improved Email Sender Reputation

ESPs like Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL use a combination of different metrics to decide whether to deliver your emails to your subscribers.

They don’t publicly state how much weight is given to each metric, but they have stated that open rates and engagement are metrics they use.

As shown in the two case studies, cleaning your list improves both open rates and engagement.

It’s clear that improving both will increase your email sender reputation and help you get more emails delivered to your subscribers inbox.

Accurate Email Data

When you leave a bunch of inactive subscribers on your email list, it completely throws off your data and makes it difficult to determine what’s actually working with your email list.

Here’s an Example:

You have a 10,000 person email list. Then you send an email to an offer.

You get a 5% open rate, a 50% click through to the offer, and 5% of the people who clicked through purchase a $27 product.

That means 500 people opened your email, 250 people clicked on the offer link and 13 people purchased.

Based on these numbers you earned $351 (13 x $27=$351). Your earnings per email subscriber on this offer is $0.0351.

With just a 5% open rate you may be thinking that either your list wasn’t that interested in your offer or your email copy wasn’t very good.

Remember that Epilson study we talked about earlier that says 42% of email subscribers on email lists are inactive for 12 months or more?

Let’s do the math for an email list that was cleaned. 42% x 10,000 = 4,200 inactive email subscribers. 10,000 – 4,200 = 5,800 active email subscribers.

If you send out the same exact email with the same numbers 500 opens, 250 click throughs, and 13 sales on a $27 product.

Your open rate is now 8.6%, and your earnings per email subscriber are now $0.0605 which is 58% higher.

Imagine making this mistake on every single promotion throughout an entire year. Your email data will be even more inaccurate.

You would be making decisions based on bad data.

For fun, let us take a look at how off your data would be if you ran just 2 promotions like this per month with the same exact results for an entire year.

Non-Cleaned List Earnings Per Subscriber: $0.0351 x 24 promotions = $0.84

Cleaned List Earnings Per Subscriber: $0.0605 x 24 promotions = $1.45

Yikes!

Lower CRM and Autoresponder Costs

Most CRMs and Autoresponders charge based on subscriber count or the number of emails sent. Some even charge you multiple times if a subscriber is on multiple lists.

If you’re using a CRM or Autoresponder that charges this way, cleaning your list could place you on a lower plan to cut your costs as it did for the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development.

Conclusion:

Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.

After reading both of these case studies, you now know that email list cleaning does improve your bottom line and your email marketing performance.