Tips On Maintaining An E-Mail List
While there are many that have switched to texting in favor of electronic mail, there is no denying that an active e-mail list is one that can do wonders for businesses of all sizes. The mistake that many of these entities make though is thinking that they can simply fill the body of the e-mail, add the list of recipients and hit send. There are all manner of things that can go wrong during that process, with that massive list slowly dwindling away without you even being aware of it.
Establish E-Mail Authentication
In order to ensure that as many people as possible get the e-mails you send, you need to be a little proactive in your e-mailing process. That begins with e-mail authentication, which is basically a way of letting the recipients know that the e-mail they are receiving is in fact coming from where it says. If that isn’t in place, many people will not even open it, no matter how enticing the subject line. Almost as important is list hygiene, which is the process of making sure you keep up with unsubscribe requests, e-mail changes and more. You cannot maintain a 100% delivery rate without doing that. If you are maintaining your own e-mail service, feedback loops are a great way to track incoming complaints, which allows you to better adjust future e-mails to suit a larger audience.
Keep Consistent
People that sign up for your list are probably expecting to see e-mails come in a fairly consistent basis. Try to stick to the same day every week or same time every day when e-mailing your list. You will find that people will then be actively anticipating receiving the e-mail, making them more likely to click and read. If you are maintaining a consistent pace, but still find that your engagement metrics are low, you might want to look at the quality of your list. There is no point in having 10,000 subscribers if only 1% is actually paying attention to what you send.
Monitor Subscriber Numbers
There are a few other reasons why your engagement numbers are not where they should be. The first of those is that some providers will automatically block e-mails from certain domains. If you are using one of those domains, it might just be that your e-mails aren’t getting through to a large percentage of subscribers. Sometimes, though, the fault is actually with you and the content you deliver. Pay attention to the numbers on each e-mail to see which subjects appear to generate more interest than others. While HTML mails look pretty, it’s not everyone that wants or can accept them. Give your subscribers the option to view the mail in a plain text version.
Watch Bounce Rates
It’s also important to pay attention to e-mails that bounce, removing the ones that do. This will help keep your list clean and prevent the numbers from becoming skewed. Last, but by no means least, make sure that you are in compliance with all the spam laws, as this will help keep complaints to a minimum.
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