How to identify high risk email addresses to delete from my ESP?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign states before removing inactive subscribers, create a re-engagement campaign to try and win them back. This gives them a chance to re-subscribe or engage with your content. If they don't respond, you can safely remove them.
Email marketer from Reddit suggests using an email list cleaning service to identify invalid email addresses. These services use various techniques to detect invalid, disposable, and spam trap emails. They can save you time and improve your email deliverability.
Email marketer from Neil Patel explains that cleaning your email list helps improve deliverability and sender reputation. Start by identifying and removing inactive subscribers (those who haven't opened or clicked in a while), bounced emails, and spam complaints. Regularly cleaning your list ensures you're only emailing engaged subscribers.
Email marketer from OptinMonster shares that using double opt-in helps ensure that only valid and engaged subscribers are added to your list. This reduces the risk of adding invalid or bot-created email addresses, improving the quality of your list.
Email marketer from Quora suggests removing email addresses with high bounce rates. High bounce rates negatively affect your sender reputation. You can identify these addresses by monitoring your email marketing platform's reports and removing them from your list.
Marketer from Email Geeks at Kickbox suggests starting any reactivation campaign slowly after verification. They advise starting with the best-chance segment and moving to the worst, identifying the threshold along the way. They recommend considering other data points outside of email and the customer lifecycle against the length of inactivity.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor explains to use suppression lists to ensure that those who have unsubscribed, bounced, or marked as spam are never emailed. They explain that by uploading them to your ESP will help to stop you from emailing un-engaged users.
Email marketer from Mailchimp shares that using their platform's segmentation tools, you can easily identify unengaged subscribers by setting conditions based on campaign activity, such as opens and clicks. Mailchimp suggests creating segments of subscribers who haven't opened or clicked any of your last few campaigns to identify potential candidates for cleaning.
Email marketer from EmailGeeks Forum states that to identify in-active users, you should use engagement metrics to identify your inactive users. Create segments of users that haven't engaged with your content in a long time.
Email marketer from HubSpot shares that segmenting your email list based on engagement allows you to identify and target inactive subscribers. Segmenting by factors like last open date or click activity helps you find those who are no longer engaging, making them potential candidates for removal or re-engagement campaigns.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise says to maintain list hygiene. That can be achieved by using a variety of methods, including removing unengaged subscribers and cleaning invalid emails.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that hard bounces, caused by invalid or non-existent email addresses, should be immediately removed from your email list to maintain a good sender reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks advises to determine the underlying business goal first, such as identifying addresses still in use or customers interested in making another purchase. Then, tailor a re-engagement campaign instead of directly adding addresses to the regular marketing stream. They suggest starting with recent addresses and tracking delivery and engagement stats. Laura also recommends segmenting addresses by inactivity duration (>5 years and >2 <3 years) and using Kickbox to assess validity, providing data for informed decisions.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that the underlying issue is the potential for recipients at older addresses to mark the mail as spam. Removing undeliverable addresses will not change that. They further elaborate data cleanup should involve assessing business tolerance for risk, the data acquisition process, and future plans for the addresses. If triggered by delivery issues/spamhaus, it becomes even more critical.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Google answers explains to keep your bounce rate under 5% and that email addresses that cause bounces should be removed in your email list
Documentation from SendGrid explains that email list validation is crucial for maintaining a healthy sender reputation. It identifies and removes invalid email addresses before you send, reducing bounce rates and improving engagement. They advise using an email verification service to detect invalid, inactive, and risky email addresses.
Documentation from Litmus suggests avoiding spam traps. Spam traps are email addresses used by blacklisting services to catch spammers. Hitting spam traps can severely damage your sender reputation. Regularly cleaning your list and using double opt-in can help you avoid them.
Documentation from AWS answers shares that AWS offers features to help you identify invalid email addresses. These features include bounce handling and complaint feedback loops. By monitoring these, you can identify and remove email addresses that are causing deliverability issues.
Documentation from RFC explains that using bounce codes such as hard and soft bounces helps indicate what emails addresses are invalid and should be removed from your email list