4 WAYS TO CLEAN UP YOUR EMAIL LIST

Email lists are one of the best ways to keep in contact with customers and clients. There is a constant need for managing this list and these 4 basic tips will help clean up your list and refine the list to core subscribers. Following a full list clean-up, routine maintenance will keep this list highly effective and responsive to your email marketing strategies.

You may need to do a bit of research before determining how to manage and update your email list. Some service providers, like Mail Chimp, make it easy to update and edit details within the audience profiles in your email account. Others, like Squarespace email campaigns, only allow edits by uploading a CVS file with updated data.

1. Edit Existing Content

Email list information is formulated from the data the subscriber inputs when signing up online. However the subscriber keys in the information is how it populates in the email list. This means email lists can become sloppy with capitalizations (or lack thereof). Spend some time going through your existing list and capitalizing first and last names. 

Capitalization does not impact email addresses, however, it will neaten up your list to follow the same guidelines for all your email listings. 

2. Fill In Missing Content

Personalization by using people’s names can increase response to calls to action, reader rate, and overall sales. Inputting names into the subscription form can be a requirement for signing up for email newsletters, but if names aren’t required, then your email list might have a number of missing names. 

Fill in missing content when the fix is obvious. You can oftentimes piece together a first, and sometimes last name, based on the email address itself. If a name is unclear, then it’s best to leave it blank.

3. Remove Unsubscribes & Bounces

Email service providers will often keep the unsubscribed and bounced emails in your master list even though they won’t receive emails. There are two reasons why you will want to delete your unsubscribes. First, the total number of email addresses on the list can count toward your overall audience count thus impacting how much you pay for the service. This will depend on the service you use and the terms of using their email marketing system. Second, you can get a more accurate email list count by reducing the number of unsubscribed and bounced emails. More accurate numbers are easier to track success. 

Some email service providers don’t allow deletion. This is to prevent you from re-adding an email address manually that has requested to not be contacted. 

4. Add Contacts Manually 

Forms and digital signups are great to capture emails automatically, however, some email addresses are captured in person. Swapping business cards or emails written on sign-up sheets will need to be manually entered into your master email list. Create a schedule to manually add emails. Quarterly or monthly might be a good schedule depending on how quickly you obtain new email addresses. 

What other strategies are you using to maintain and clean up your email list? Comment below!

If you are looking to further develop your email marketing check out this post: 7 STRATEGIES TO AMP UP YOUR ARTIST NEWSLETTERS