Our CEO, Steve, has long advised on the subject of email and data and recently helped with an article on list hygiene for B2B Marketing.
Here’s an excerpt from what Steve and author, Kavita, had to say…
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Email hygiene might seem like an easy task for marketers to manage, but it can get complicated if they don’t know how to maintain healthy practices. Kavita Singh spoke with B2B Marketing’s Propolis Hive expert for execution and campaigns, Steve Kemish, about what email hygiene is and why it’s important to keep up with it.
What is email hygiene?
Simply put, email hygiene is keeping an up-to-date clean and best quality email list. That normally means removing records that are no longer working or out of date.
To do this, marketers need to understand the difference between a hard and soft bounce in email. A hard bounce is when an email address technically doesn’t work anymore, due to someone leaving the business. In the case for soft bounces, the email still works but the system sends back some sort of ‘out of office’ or ‘your email is not recognised’.
Steve says: “So you would, therefore, not really worry about soft bounces. It’s only those hard bounces you’ll need to worry about because they’re dead and not a valid route to an organisation. You’re going to need to get rid of those because you’re normally paying in email terms per thousand sends. Alieving those hard records and bounces in your email list will prevent you ending up on some sort of spam system.”
Some signs you need to address poor email quality include:
- Ending up in the spam filter
- Large number of bounces
- Low open rates and click-through rates
Why is it important right now?
It’s always essential to keep good hygiene, so why should you care now in 2021? With lockdown, it’s harder to sell to new customers for multiple reasons. For sales, they can’t use their office phones for outbound telemarketing or talk to someone they’re nurturing.
Steve says: “Chuck in the fact that Covid-19 was a financial stress for many organisations, so they might’ve attained the mindset: ‘It’s too hard to go and try to sell to new people in a difficult time.’ That’s meant that retention has gotten more important now than ever.”
Read the full article now at B2B Marketing’s website…
