How often do you have to clean your email base: What experts say

    by Irina Podorvan
    31.07.2020

    Frequency of email validation

    An email list is the ground of successful mass mailing campaigns. Whether the list consists of real people or imaginary characters can change the result of an email campaign.

    To have an effective mailing, it is important to be careful collecting and verifying email databases.

    Read the article and know what a qualitative list is and how it influences the PR, link building, sales, recruiting.

    Furthermore, we ask the experts how often it is important to clean the email list.

    How quality of email list influence PR, link building, sales, recruiting

    To have a visual representation of email list influence in the different spheres, we propose to imagine yourself in different roles.

    Email database and PR

    Imagine you are a newcomer PR manager of a famous brand. Your first task is to send emails on the list that you were given. Without any doubts, you click the Send button. Getting the report of the mass mailing campaign you notice a high bounce rate and complaints. As a clever specialist, you understand such rates mean that providers can block the domain and you won’t be able to send mass email campaigns anymore.

    If you had checked the email base and ensured in its qualitative, the brand reputation wouldn’t have suffered.

    Link building and mass mailing list

    Let’s imagine that now you are a link builder. The main part of your job is to mail the target audience. You have collected the emails of influencers, bloggers, and editors from open sources. The report shows that a great number of your emails were marked as spam. The situation is the same as the previous one. Non-qualitative base spoils the present and future campaigns.

    Email marketing and mass mailing base

    You are an email marketer and your boss says that you will get a prize if you increase sales via mass mailing. You’ve prepared the right text for the email campaign, designers created a perfect template. All seems to be ideal and you have been dreaming about vacations near the beach. But your dreams will crash on the rocks after getting the report of mass mailing. Many emails were in the Spam folder, some recipients complaint on the mailing, and the bounce rate was high.

    Recruiting and the email base

    And now you are a recruiter. You are looking for workers and need to do it quickly. You've bought the list of people's emails that work in your sphere. Sending a dozen emails you have no answer. The statistics show a top-level of email newsletters in the Spam folder.

    The base always needs verification. Even if you are sure in its quality you should check it before pressing the Send button.

    Why email base is spoiled?

    Despite the way of collecting email addresses, there is a high probability that dead emails are hiding in the list. Let’s find out what emails and why they spoil your email database:

    • Human factor. Often people don’t want to receive promo emails and they enter the invalid email addresses or create emails for one day.
    • Old emails. If the base was collected some months ago there is a high probability that old emails are on the list. Old email addresses are the emails about which the user has forgotten and don’t check Mailbox.
    • Spam traps. These types of emails are so insidious. They are created to catch dishonest senders. Spam traps are emails that earlier belong to a real person but now it is inactive email. It is difficult to identify such emails, but Atomic Mail Verifier can do this.
    • Time. It is one of the main reasons why the email base is spoiled. If the base is old and you don’t send emails for a long time, users have forgotten about you. With high probability, they will mark such emails as spam. As result providers block the domain and sending emails becomes impossible.

    As you see email list can be clean if you don’t make efforts to support its hygiene. We asked experts why and how often it is a must to check the validity of the email base.

    Frequency of validation email list: Experts’ opinion

    There is no rule on how often it needs to check the validity of emails. Some marketers don’t do it, some validate the list before each mailing. We’ve asked experts what they advise on the regularity of checking.

    Daria Kazakova, email marketer at AtomPark Software

    How often do you have to clean email base

    “There is no clear rule on how often to clean email bases, but exist the rule of Double-opt-in to make users confirm email addresses.

    I verify new emails before each mailing before importing them to the mass-mailing tool.

    Recommended reactivating users once every six months, to validate the list and send reactivation emails to inactive users.

    In any case, if the email campaign is preparing for sending and the base was collected some months/years ago it is a must to validate the list”.

    Alise Kirichok, Product Owner in BSG, Founder of EmailConsulting.top

    Validation of email list

    “Hygiene of email lists is an important topic. That’s what it takes to be emailed in Inbox, not in Spam.

    Firstly, make up your mind with the goals of the email campaign: Open Rate, Click Rate, CTOR, and financial result.

    Because unnecessary hygiene can kill your income in a chase of high rates of opening or clicks. If in your base there is more than 5% of invalid emails it has a negative impact on domain reputation.

    When one hundred percent you should check email base:

    • When double-opt-in subscription – a feature of confirming the validity of email by users. Don’t have to bow out from it in favor of Single-opt-in. It saves your reputation and you follow GDPR principles.
    • If you don’t send emails for more than 3 months. Many email addresses can’t be used. Necessarily check the validity of email not to spoil domain reputation.

    It is important! Don’t cut pieces of users, for example, “don’t read emails for 3 months”. Our experience shows that such an approach has a negative influence on sales. Probably users that don’t read emails for a long time need other propositions. Have a high conversion!”

    Anika Ani, digital marketing strategist at Fiverr

    Email base cleaning

    “Email validation is a potential solution to the epidemic of inaccurate or abandoned email addresses. Email verification can step in to keep your connections current with loyal subscribers or interested prospects for better email marketing results.

    Using an email validation process includes real-time verification of subscribers on your email list, both as they enter the email and in the batch form with your existing list. It’s ideal for ensuring accuracy for both new and long-established email lists.

    When you send an email campaign to thousands of email addresses, imagine how much a more accurate list will benefit your marketing program.

    In my point of view as an email marketer, we should check our email list once per week”.

    To combine these points of view we can claim that validating an email base is a must and you should check the validity of the email list at least once every three months. Keep in mind the behavior of users and correct your campaign accordingly to their actions.

    Conclusion

    Top advice on how to care email list:

    1. Check emails if email addresses are new.
    2. If the email base was collected some years ago check their validity once every 3 months.
    3. Reactivate users every 6 months.
    4. If your base consists of more than 10 000 emails check their validity once per week.

    The mass mailing list is similar to a fuzzy flower, that you should cherish, and then it gives you a perfect result. Validate the list and email campaign will bring the client’s loyalty and increasing sales.


     

    To keep your base clean use Atomic Mail Verifier.
    Try the program for free for 7 days!

    Written by:
    Irina Podorvan
    Back to blog
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