What are the best email list cleaning services and practices?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Litmus states that maintaining good email list hygiene directly impacts subscriber engagement. Regularly cleaning your list ensures you're only sending to interested recipients, boosting open and click-through rates.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that they use MailGun’s email validation API and it’s best to assume full responsibility early in the collection funnel.
Email marketer from Email on Acid shares that improving email deliverability requires a good sender reputation, which depends on email list hygiene. Consistently cleaning your list ensures that you're not sending to invalid addresses and spam traps, thereby improving your reputation.
Email marketer from HubSpot shares that regularly cleaning your email list improves sender reputation and engagement. They advise using permission-based opt-in, monitoring engagement metrics, and having a process to remove unengaged contacts after a certain period.
Email marketer from NeverBounce shares that reducing bounce rates is a key benefit of email list cleaning. Removing invalid email addresses prevents sending to non-existent mailboxes, which lowers bounce rates and improves sender reputation.
Email marketer from ZeroBounce shares that email list cleaning services help remove invalid and risky email addresses. They highlight features like email verification, spam trap detection, and AI-powered scoring to identify and remove problematic addresses before sending.
Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that cleaning your email list involves removing inactive or unengaged subscribers to improve deliverability and engagement rates. They recommend regularly segmenting lists, using double opt-in, and removing hard bounces and unsubscribes.
Email marketer from Sendinblue explains that segmenting your email list allows you to send targeted messages to specific groups of subscribers. This can improve engagement and deliverability, as well as reduce the likelihood of unsubscribes.
Email marketer from Reddit answers that cleaning your list every 3-6 months is good practice, but more frequently is better. Delete unengaged users and inactive emails.
Email marketer from EmailGeek Forums answers that popular choices include BriteVerify and Kickbox. He suggests trying free trials to see which service fits your needs best.
Email marketer from Reddit answers that using double opt-in is a great way to ensure that subscribers are genuinely interested in receiving your emails. Confirmed opt-in also reduces the number of invalid email addresses on your list.
Email marketer from Email Geeks recommends Kickbox for scoring rather than cleaning and advises reviewing all sources of email addresses.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks explains that list verification helps clean things up but is not necessarily a magic bullet to remove spamtraps and warns about vendors promising spam trap removal.
Expert from Spam Resource advises against purchasing email lists, highlighting that these lists often contain spam traps and invalid addresses. They emphasize that using purchased lists can severely damage your sender reputation.
Expert from Word to the Wise emphasizes using engagement data for list cleaning, stating that sending to engaged users is more important than list size. They advise segmenting based on engagement and removing unengaged subscribers regularly to improve deliverability.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that when you get a hard bounce (invalid user), you need to remove that address from your list *immediately* – there's no excuse to continue mailing it. If you are doing it right, the ISPs will see that you stop mailing bounces.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Kickbox explains that email verification involves several checks, including syntax verification, domain/MX record validation, and spam trap detection. They highlight that this process helps ensure you're only sending to valid and active email addresses.
Documentation from RFC explains that proper bounce handling is crucial for maintaining a clean email list. It details the importance of processing Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs) to identify and remove invalid email addresses from the mailing list to maintain deliverability.
Documentation from Validity explains that Return Path Certification helps improve email deliverability by authenticating the sender and ensuring they follow best practices. Certified senders often get preferential treatment from mailbox providers.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains that monitoring your spam rate is crucial for maintaining good deliverability. They advise keeping your spam rate below 0.1% to avoid being flagged as a spammer by Gmail.
Documentation from Microsoft explains that using SPF records helps authenticate your emails and prevents spammers from forging your domain. Implementing SPF, along with other authentication methods, improves deliverability.