Email Data Hygiene: When you know it’s time to break up
I still get emails to the email address I created in middle school. This was back when having cutsie screen names was awesome, DSL was the latest and selecting your Top 8 on MySpace was the most stressful part of the week.
Although I haven’t sent or opened an email in that account for probably 10 years, the emails still come through.
It had been a while since I had actually gone to that inbox, though I needed to reset my password before I was even able to scroll through the pages upon pages of unread mail. Not one of them was a personal email. As I kept going through pages years back, I noticed that they’re all marketing emails – often from the same few companies.
I have not engaged after nearly a decade of sends. I have not read a single subject line. I have not opened any emails. I have not clicked any calls-to-action. Yet these companies keep sending.
How is marketing to that email address helping the marketers’ campaigns (other than contributing to list bloat)?
The importance of list hygiene
At Email Summit 2014 in Las Vegas, Laura Mihai, Email Marketing Specialist, 3M Canada, spoke on the integration of list cleansing as a regular element of its email marketing campaigns.
Laura opened her session by reflecting on a time when deliverability rates started to affect campaigns.
“We really wanted to focus on eliminating those who don’t engage with our communications,” explained Laura. The team at 3M Canada had the idea of running a campaign with the incentive of a contest to stay on the list and update contact information.
Using this campaign, the team trimmed their list by an impressive 64%. Now, they can be in touch with people who want to engage with them.
