The Importance of Email List Cleaning: A Guide to Get the Best Contacts

| Updated on February 26, 2024

Everybody knows that email marketing is the best strategy that could take your brand to a large audience. It helps to maintain a loyal customer base and increases the open rates. 

But what if these efforts to maintain an email list pile up the contacts and result in lower rates of engagement? This means it’s time to clean up your list that isn’t engaging with the customers and barely reaches a hundred people.

Studies have shown that 99% of people tend to check their messages daily, but still they have more than 50 unread ones in their inbox. That’s why you need to read this guide that tells you how cleaning the list can positively affect your marketing plan.

What Is Email Cleaning?

Email cleaning aims to remove inactive and invalid addresses from the list. If you want to see better results on the websites, you must regularly update this and clean your list.

A verification tool can help you better identify them rather than manually picking them out. Remember to launch these tools before you start any new events, or check this API here that validates the web addresses. 

This process of cleaning out the list can help you avoid situations where you might appear like a scam to the customers and internet service providers, as your interactions with invalid addresses can sometimes mark you as a scammer and block you.

How Much Does It Cost to Clean An Email List?

An email marketing company must invest in cleaning services like Email Validation to offer clients the best experience.

The cost of cleaning is not fixed, as it depends on various factors like the security level and advanced features that a cleaning service offers. Don’t look for the extremely expensive ones or the free version, find the ones that fit your needs.

If you still want a reference, we will say it lies between $5 and $2500 depending on the number of subscribers you have.

The Importance Of Email List Cleaning – 5 Reasons

Maintaining Sender Reputation 

A sender’s reputation is a very important factor that sends your email to the inbox, which is also known as the IP score. If you have a bad score, it might be delivered to the spam list.

email list cleaning effects image

Try to go for a score of 90 or more to save your brand’s identity, which you can access on senderscore.org

If you wish to maintain your reputation, avoid mistakes like misspellings, low-quality content, and aimless growth. Your list acts as your visiting card that proves your first impression to the customers, so treat it like a valued prize to increase your sales.

Protecting Your Data

The email lists include all the customer’s data and their past purchases, which are like a treasure. If you wish to protect this data, you need to keep your list clean and become a trusted brand. 

Remember that your one inability to protect the details could affect the customer’s privacy and the overall brand reputation. 

Optimizing Costs 

The cost to clean the list varies on the list size, if you have a messed up list, with old leads with lower conversion rates, the cost will be high.

Think of the tools carefully that could meet the needs of your budget and do the work without any big problems. Compare the costs with the budget and maintain a clean list that will improve sales and make sure the efforts won’t go to waste. 

Increasing Deliverability 

It means that the email is successfully delivered to the client’s inbox and to check this you need to compare the mails that reached to the ones that bounced back.

Use a credible domain address, send engaging content, and offer the option to unsubscribe to increase the deliverability of the emails. Remember, doing the vice versa of this will harm your message.

email marketing stats image

Cleaning the list does the work and ensures that your email safely reaches the audience to avoid any negative impacts. 

Reducing Bounce Rate

The health of the list can be determined by the bounce rate of the emails that happen because of the no-more valid accounts, abandoned ones, or spelling mistakes. 

Clean your list to avoid these cases, reduce your bounce rate, and get rid of the glitching accounts. Using these practices will benefit you and result in huge profits.

Signs That You Need To Clean/Scrub Your Email List

Maintaining the hygiene of the email list will not mark you as a scammer, and the clients can report you for spam, tarnishing the reputation. 

Below are some signs that you need to watch out for and clean your email list:

Presence Of Bot Subscribers

If there is a sudden increase in sign-ups in large amounts, understand that those are the bot subscribers that will drop your open rates. Also, be aware of the strange domain addresses or the newly added web accounts that look strange to you.

The increase of people wanting to unsubscribe, and the complaints, shows the presence of a bot. Take immediate action if you find these cases.

Decreased Open And Click-Through Rates

There could be some problems in your list if you see a reduction in the open rates and the click-through rates. 

Try to identify the cause and take the expert’s help to resolve the issue.

Good vs Bad Bounce Rate

A bounce rate below 3% is a safe amount, however, if it reaches above that amount, it can harm your email lists and affect the brand’s identity.

bounce rate error stats image

If you see a sudden increase in the rate that reaches up to 8%, immediately take action and find the solution.

Types Of Email Bounces

There are mainly two types of bounces – soft and hard, where a soft one means that it is currently not deliverable because of some issues, and a hard bounce means that it failed to deliver due to permanent reasons. 

Increased Bounce Rate

If you wish to solve the issue of a sudden increase in bounce rates, then start by focusing on open rates and investigating the issues to consider if you want to remove the web addresses or not. 

Email List Cleaning Best Practices

Find Out Why Your Emails Bounce

If you want to permanently resolve the issues, understand the technical issues behind the repeated bounce rates. Get to know how the email provider helps deal with the bounces and blocks them.

As for the solution, you can use automated rules to maintain the health of the emails. 

Make It Easy To Unsubscribe 

Send emails that give clients the freedom to unsubscribe anytime they want, as sometimes doing the opposite bothers the customers and results in reports. 

Allow easy access and don’t force them to go to the extent of reporting you for going against the regulations.

Renew The Opt-in

It means offering the no-more active clients a new chance to get back to the subscription. You can send them a message of call-to-action and remind them about the re-subscription. 

It will show mutual respect where the customers are free to keep their private space.

Send A Re-Engagement Email Campaign

Many people forget to check out the updates and newsletters because of their busy lives, so you don’t need to be demotivated, just remind them by offering bonuses and discounts to tempt them and pull their interest back. 

Consider tailoring the email content to the user’s needs and offer various engaging events. 

Segment Your Email List For Inactive Subscribers

Set your email list apart based on the various bases and put the inactive subscribers out of the list. It is often used as a method to give tailored services to the customers. 

Make the strategies that benefit you along with the customers, like using automation tools.

To Sum Up

Email list cleaning is the best solution that could save your drowning business and your emails from getting lost on the spam list of the clients.

It can further increase your brand reputation and decrease the chance of bounce rates and reports of complaints. Don’t be demotivated, as you can win your customers back with the tips mentioned above.

Seek help from the email marketing tools to see the results and get to work now!!





Shinely Ainsworth

Shinely is a tech enthusiast with a bachelor of arts degree in English and Creative Writing. Later on, she turned towards technical writing and has been doing it since 2015. From there onwards, she has been consistently writing technical and troubleshooting blogs and articles. Shinely is a writer and editor with 5 years of experience in writing reviews, news, tips, and troubleshooting articles.

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