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Do you wake up each morning to an inbox full of newsletters or promotional offers? If so, you’re part of an email list, a comprehensive database of names and email addresses that companies use to distribute online marketing materials to their audience (you!). How a company keeps track of and uses that contact information is known as email list management.
This management process often involves growing your database by encouraging your customers to opt-in to promotional emails, eliminating addresses that bounce frequently or are inactive, and segmenting contacts for better targeting and personalization.
In other words, it’s one thing to simply gather email addresses. It’s another thing entirely to maintain and optimize that list of email addresses to ensure you’re getting the right content to the right people.
A well-maintained email list can be the difference between ending up in front of your customers or going to the junk folder. Quality is more important than quantity here. It’s better to have a smaller list of subscribers who will actually open and click your emails than a giant list of inactive contacts.
Email list hygiene is key to making sure the email addresses you have are the right ones. Here are three best practices to keep in mind when optimizing your list:
Email list management is about weeding out inactive contacts as well as generating new, engaged signups. However, that is easier said than done. You don’t want to grow your email list with unqualified leads, just to turn around and delete them from your database due to inactivity.
Here are four ways to grow your email list with qualified, engaged contacts:
When growing your email list, it’s easy to get hung up on numbers. You may want to reach a certain number of subscribers or bring in 100 new email addresses each month. Don’t forget that the size of your database is a vanity metric. It doesn’t tell you anything about how engaged your leads and customers are or what kind of content they prefer to receive.
Change your mindset and focus on the quality of your email database. Prioritize engagement and personalization over numbers and you’ll unlock the true potential of email marketing.