Email marketing is always changing as people want more personalized emails. What most people don’t know is that things look very different from a marketer’s perspective. That’s why email address verification is crucial.
If you’re managing emails, it can first feel like tidying up a messy room. Just having an email address doesn’t mean the receiver will read your email. Many things affect whether your email gets delivered, opened, clicked on, or leads to a sale.
So, what’s the first thing you should do to make sure your emails do well? Start with developing marketing skills through education. Then, make sure to create a clean email list using email address verification. A clean list, along with a good email marketing plan, will help more people read your emails and reduce the number of people who unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.
Why Should You Invest in Email Address Verification
- Ensuring accuracy: Email address verification helps confirm that the addresses entered are valid and correctly formatted. This reduces the likelihood of typos or errors, ensuring that messages reach the intended recipients and enhances your sales outreach.
- Reducing bounce rates: Did you know that the best-case scenario for open rates stands at 41% and that too in real estate? Invalid email addresses often result in bounced emails, which can negatively impact the sender’s reputation and deliverability.
Email address verification before sending messages helps businesses reduce bounce rates and maintain a positive sender reputation.
- Preventing fraud: Email address verification can help identify potentially fraudulent or malicious activity, such as fake accounts or attempts at phishing. Email address verification adds an extra layer of security by ensuring that users provide legitimate contact information.
- Improving engagement: Sending emails to verified addresses increases the likelihood of reaching active and engaged recipients. This can lead to higher open rates, click-through rates, and overall client outreach effectiveness.
- Compliance: In some jurisdictions, such as under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), businesses are required to ensure the accuracy and legitimacy of the personal data they collect and process, including email addresses.
Email address verification helps businesses comply with data protection regulations. If you’re in the lookout for a great email checking api, click on the link.
What Causes an Email List to Deteriorate?
There are many factors that cause an email list to deteriorate. Let’s go over some of the important ones:
1. Checking for Bad Emails
When email addresses go bad, it’s usually because someone changes jobs or maybe they stop using that email altogether. If you don’t clean out these bad emails, your emails might bounce back, which is like getting a letter returned to you because the address is wrong.
This can make it look like you’re not doing a good job at keeping up with your email list.
2. Finding and Fixing Duplicates
Duplicates are like having two copies of the same book on your shelf. It’s just unnecessary clutter. When the same person accidentally gets added to your list more than once, it messes up your numbers.
By finding and fixing these duplicates, you’re making sure your list is neat and accurate, like organizing your bookshelf so you can find what you need easily.
3. Dealing with Quiet Subscribers
Think of inactive subscribers like friends who haven’t called you in a while. Maybe they’re just busy or maybe they’re not interested anymore. Either way, it’s a good idea to check in with them.
If they’re not opening or clicking on your emails, it might be time to send them something special to get their attention again, or maybe it’s best to say goodbye for now.
4. Too Many Spam Complaints
When people mark your emails as spam, it’s them saying that they don’t care about receiving them. This can hurt your reputation and make it harder for your emails to reach other people’s inboxes.
So, it’s important to figure out why people are marking your emails as spam and fix the problem so it doesn’t happen again.
5. Handling Bounced Emails
Bounced emails are similar to letters that get sent back to you because the address is wrong or the mailbox is full. It’s a sign that something’s not right with your email list or how you’re sending emails.
By getting rid of these bad emails, you’re keeping your list healthy and making sure your emails have a better chance of reaching their destination.
6. Sending the Right Stuff to the Right People
Imagine if you invited everyone you know to a birthday party, but some people don’t like cake and others don’t like balloons. Sending everyone the same email is kind of like that.
By separating your list into different groups based on what people like, you’re making sure everyone gets emails they care about, which makes them more likely to open and read them.
7. Making Sure New Subscribers Are Real
When new people sign up for your emails, it’s exciting, but it’s also important to make sure they’re real people who actually want to hear from you. Using a double opt-in process is like asking them twice if they’re sure they want to come to your party.
It helps make sure your list is full of people who are really interested in what you have to say, which makes your emails more effective.
In the era of data driven decision making, having a thoroughly cleaned email list could mean the difference between success and failure.
The Results of NOT Having a Clean Email List on Your Marketing Campaign
Having a clean list using email address verification is not a preference; it’s a must. Here are some results you can expect if you’re not managing your email list list properly:
1. Your Emails Might Not Get Through
Imagine you’re trying to send out party invitations, but half the addresses are wrong or no longer exist. That’s what happens with bounced emails or when people mark your emails as spam.
Email providers notice this and might think you’re up to no good, so they block or filter out your messages. That means fewer people will see what you’re sending, and all your hard work might go to waste.
2. People Might Stop Trusting You
Think about how you feel when you keep getting messages that you don’t care about. It’s annoying, right? Well, the same goes for your subscribers. If you keep bombarding them with stuff they’re not interested in, they’ll get annoyed and might stop trusting you.
They might even start ignoring or deleting your emails without even opening them. Then it’s harder to get them interested in what you have to say in the future.
3. You Might Get Confused Stats
Numbers are supposed to help you understand how well your emails are doing. But if your list isn’t clean, those numbers can be all messed up. For example, if you have lots of old or fake email addresses on your list, it can make it look like more people are opening your emails than they actually are.
This can make it hard to figure out what’s working and what’s not in your marketing plan, and you might end up making decisions based on false information.
4. You Could Get in Trouble
There are rules about how you can send emails, like GDPR and CAN-SPAM. If you break these rules by not keeping your list tidy, you could get into trouble. That could mean fines or other legal problems, and nobody wants that.
To avoid these problems, you need to clean your list regularly:
- Get rid of emails that bounce or aren’t valid anymore. It’s like throwing out old party invitations that nobody will ever RSVP to.
- Use email address verification services that check if email addresses are real. These services can help you make sure that the addresses on your list are actually connected to real people who want to hear from you.
- Try to get people who haven’t been opening your emails interested again. You can do this by sending them special offers or interesting content that might catch their eye.
- Make sure people really want to be on your list by using a double opt-in process. This means they have to confirm twice that they want to get emails from you, so you know they’re really interested.
Cleaning your email list isn’t just about avoiding problems. It’s about making sure your emails actually reach people who want to hear from you. By keeping your list tidy, you can make your email marketing work better, get more people engaged, and follow the rules. So, it’s something you need to keep doing to make sure your emails are effective.
Best Practices for Cleaning Your Email List
Now that you know the importance of email address verification in having a clean email list, let’s discover some of the best practices you can utilize to make the most out of tour email marketing campaigns:
1. Keep Your List Clean
Having a tidy email list is like keeping your room organized. You need to make a plan and stick to it. Regularly check your list to see if it needs cleaning up. Look at how many people are on it and how they’re interacting with your emails. If a lot of them aren’t opening or clicking on your emails, it’s time to investigate why.
When you’re going through your list, be on the lookout for things like duplicate emails, typos, and email addresses with the word ‘spam’ in them.
Fixing these issues ensures that your emails are going to the right place and not bouncing back. Also, email address verification is a must!
2. Try Double Opt-Ins
Double opt-ins are like adding an extra lock to your door to make sure only the right people get in. After someone signs up for your emails, you send them a confirmation email. They have to click a link in that email to confirm they really want to be on your list.
This helps them get used to seeing your emails, tells their email provider your emails aren’t spam, and gives them a chance to save your contact info for future reference.
3. Watch Your Bounce Rate
Bounced emails are like messages that got lost in the mail. They happen when an email can’t be delivered for some reason, like if there’s a typo in the address or the email doesn’t exist anymore.
Checking for bounced emails is crucial because it can improve how many of your emails actually get delivered. There are two types of bounces: soft and hard.
A soft bounce is like a hiccup in the system, usually a temporary issue like a full inbox. You can try sending the email again, and it might go through.
A hard bounce is a more serious problem, like an email address that doesn’t exist. You need to get rid of these addresses to keep your email service happy. If you get too many hard bounces, your emails might start getting marked as spam.
4. Automate Your Emails
Automation is like having a personal assistant for your emails. You can set up your system to automatically do things like move inactive subscribers to a different list or send them a special email to re-engage them. This saves you time and makes sure you’re sending the right emails to the right people at the right time.
5. Give Options
It’s good to give your subscribers choices. Instead of just letting them unsubscribe, give them the option to get fewer emails instead. This way, they can still stay on your list without feeling overwhelmed by too many messages.
6. Know Your Audience
Understanding who your subscribers are is like knowing your audience before putting on a show. Try to figure out what they’re interested in and what might grab their attention.
You can separate them into different groups based on things like their age or interests. Then, you can send them emails that they’re more likely to open and engage with.
7. Say Goodbye to Inactive Subscribers
Inactive subscribers are like friends who haven’t been returning your calls. It’s time to let them go so you can focus on the ones who are still interested in what you have to say.
Before you say goodbye for good, though, you can try sending them one last email to see if they’re interested in sticking around. If not, it’s best to part ways gracefully to maintain a healthy email list.
Email Address Verification Changes the Game: Final Words
Email address verification is a game-changer for marketers because it helps them make sure they’re sending emails to real people who want to hear from them.
By confirming email addresses, marketers can avoid sending emails to fake or old addresses, which can make their emails bounce back like a basketball hitting the rim.
This means fewer of their emails end up in the spam folder and more in the inbox, where they have a better chance of getting read. If you haven’t used one yet in your marketing stack, we highly recommend you begin now!