LIST MANAGEMENT
To ensure delivery of your emails and minimize email churn, actively managing your existing list is vital. A high bounce rate (from invalid addresses) may cause an ISP to block your emails (by assuming that you are a bulk spammer). Secondly, even if you have an average bounce rate of around 2% each month, this means that each year you may lose about 25% of your subscribers due to address changes. Here are some quick list management tips:
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_ List Hygiene: Customers often incorrectly type in their email addresses - make sure your email technology will find obvious errors such as a lack of "@." Secondly, review your list of bounced emails looking for other typos and errors such as name@alo.com instead of name@aol.com. Another option to help minimize incorrectly entered email addresses would be to require confirmation of the email address on the opt-in form on your web
site.
_ Email Address Changes: Annually, 30% of consumers change their email addresses. This means that for a list of 100,000, up to 30,000 subscribers may be lost each year. To minimize this address churn, consider some of the following techniques:
_ Include an "update email address" link in every email.
_ Include a link to your account page or profile page in all communications and remind subscribers to update their email address and other vital information.
_ Add a manage account/preferences page on your Web site, if it doesn't already exist.
_ For customers whose email has bounced at least once or twice, send a postcard informing them of their invalid address and incenting them with an offer to update their email address. (Assuming you have known mailing addresses),
_ Consider utilizing an email change of address (ECOA) service such as Return Path to obtain new/alternate email addresses for subscribers.
_ Ask customers/subscribers for a second email address. When the primary address bounces, emails can sub sequently be sent to the secondary email address.