12 Email List Management Best Practices and Tools for 2022

Want to get essentially the most out of your electronic mail advertising and marketing campaigns? Then you’ll wish to begin taking note of not solely how shortly your electronic mail record grows but additionally how well-maintained it’s.

Email record administration, as that’s what we’ll talk about on this article, is prime to reaching robust outcomes out of your advertising and marketing efforts. Not solely will it aid you preserve your viewers engaged, however it’ll additionally prevent cash in the long term.

If you wish to be taught what electronic mail record administration entails, tips on how to do it proper, and what are the highest electronic mail record administration instruments that’ll aid you alongside the way in which, then preserve studying.

Bonus: If you’d choose this data in a extra visible format, take a look at our infographic at the end of this article.

Table Of Contents

But first, what’s electronic mail record administration?

Email record administration describes the technique of managing and controlling electronic mail subscribers in your lists and segments.

It overlooks numerous processes, ranging from sustaining up to date tagging and segmentation to eradicating invalid electronic mail addresses, duplicates, unsubscribes, and unengaged contacts out of your record.

Through this technique, you may ship extra focused emails, which is important to delivering participating and extremely changing electronic mail campaigns.

Benefits of correct electronic mail record administration

Email record administration isn’t simply good apply. It’s a technique that may put you forward of different companies and remodel your electronic mail advertising and marketing program into one which generates an impressive return on funding.

Here’s what you may obtain by way of managing your electronic mail contacts:

• You’ll have a greater understanding of your viewers, together with the important thing segments that generate essentially the most worth for your corporation.
• You’ll have extra dependable knowledge and will be capable to ship extra customized emails that drive extra income out of your campaigns.
• You’ll obtain the next inbox placement charge as spam filters rely closely on electronic mail customers’ engagement (extra on why emails land in spam)
• You’ll preserve a wholesome record, freed from undesirable addresses comparable to spam traps, unengaged contacts, and faux electronic mail addresses.
• You’ll decrease your prices, as most electronic mail advertising and marketing suppliers cost you based mostly on the dimensions of your contacts record or the quantity you ship to.

Now that we perceive what electronic mail record administration is and know its worth, let’s go into some greatest practices you can begin working with.

Best practices for managing an electronic mail or contact record

Here are 12 greatest practices you need to use to get began and enhance your current electronic mail record administration processes.

1. Ensure your opt-in types are arrange correctly

Even if you have already got an electronic mail record, you’ll wish to guarantee your signup types are arrange correctly.

What I imply by that’s that not solely your signup types are safe and add new contacts into your electronic mail database in real-time, but additionally that you simply gather the consumer consent the proper means.

Doing this, you’ll save your self the difficulty later filtering subscribers who aren’t taken with your provide or by no means meant to hitch your record within the first place.

Here are the overall guidelines you’ll wish to observe in your signup types:

• Be particular and absolutely clear about what your customers are signing up for. You don’t wish to trick individuals into becoming a member of your subscription by making false guarantees.
• Ask your guests solely for the completely important private data, like identify and electronic mail handle. In most instances, that’s all that you must ship related content material to your viewers and you may collect any extra data (like firm identify or birthday) later.
• Get specific consent when you’re planning to ship advertising and marketing emails to your contacts. You can do that by including an elective checkbox that’ll let customers select in the event that they wish to be part of your record.
• Provide extra details about the way you’re going to course of consumer knowledge, how subscribers can edit or have their knowledge eliminated, and how they’ll entry your privateness coverage data.
• Ideally, use confirmed opt-in to confirm the brand new electronic mail subscribers and filter out invalid electronic mail addresses immediately.

In addition, in your web site or touchdown web page, you might also wish to add further safety features that’ll aid you filter out bot site visitors and keep away from the so-called mail bombing. With free companies like Google’s reCAPTCHA, you may be sure that your types is not going to be compromised and no bots shall be mechanically added to your electronic mail record or buyer relationship administration system (CRM). And relaxation assured, with reCaptcha put in your web page will nonetheless perform correctly and let actual customers submit your types.

2. Verify new contacts with confirmed opt-in

We’ve briefly touched upon confirmed opt-in, a.ok.a. double opt-in, within the earlier level, nevertheless it’s price going over this in a bit extra element.

Especially on condition that it’s thought-about the gold normal of electronic mail advertising and marketing by quite a few organizations, together with Spamhaus and M3AAWG.

With correct electronic mail record administration, you’ll be capable to filter out the unengaged electronic mail subscribers regardless of the place or once they begin to grow to be unresponsive. However, confirmed opt-in may also help you make sure that solely high quality contacts be part of your record within the first place.

Here’s the way it works:

Step 1. In your signup type, you notify the brand new contact that to totally be part of the subscription, they should confirm their electronic mail handle by clicking the hyperlink within the affirmation electronic mail.

Here’s how Further does it on their e-newsletter signup thanks web page:

Thank you web page informing customers about the necessity to affirm their subscription

Step 2. They obtain a affirmation that accommodates a single hyperlink that verifies their submission. If they efficiently click on it, they get added to your record. If they fail to click on it, they’re not added to your record.

Here’s what the affirmation electronic mail from Further appears like:

Confirmation electronic mail from Further

Thanks to this, even when somebody makes a typo or supplies you with a faux electronic mail handle, it gained’t have an effect on your electronic mail program’s success. That’s as a result of such customers won’t ever click on on the verification hyperlink and, subsequently, gained’t be getting your future communication.

While confirmed opt-in helps you construct a wholesome electronic mail record, there’s additionally one other profit to it – it offers the Internet Services Providers (ISPs) like Gmail or Yahoo! a sign that you simply’re a stable sender and that your messages are legit. In different phrases, it helps you construct a robust sender repute, improves your electronic mail deliverability, and helps your messages steer clear of spam folders.

3. Greet your new contacts with welcome emails

When new subscribers decide into your contact record, their engagement and curiosity in your model are on the highest stage.

After all, they’ve made a deliberate determination to fill out that type and offered you with their electronic mail handle since you’ve caught their curiosity. And now they’re eagerly anticipating your subsequent transfer.

The greatest approach to make impression in your new subscribers is to ship them a shocking welcome electronic mail – or perhaps a entire onboarding electronic mail sequence.

Example of a well-designed and participating welcome electronic mail from Magic Spoon.

Here’s what you may obtain by way of welcome electronic mail (collection):

• Confirm to the brand new recipients that the subscription was processed nicely.
• Thank the brand new contacts for becoming a member of the record and entrusting you with their private data.
• Set the tone for future communication and inform them concerning the frequency and matters you’ll be pertaining to.
• Deliver any content material you’ve promised them within the signup type.
• Provide ideas and helpful hyperlinks for one of the best ways to start out exploring your model or web site.
• Confirm the sender handle they’ll count on to listen to from you sooner or later, in order that they add it to their secure sender record.

On prime of that, since welcome emails get exceptionally excessive engagement charges (common open charges above 86% and click-throughs over 24% in line with our Email Marketing Benchmarks examine) they’ll positively have an effect on your sender repute within the Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs) like Gmail or Yahoo! eyes.

Pro tip: Setting up a welcome electronic mail is easy, and contemplating its effectiveness, it’s vital for any enterprise.

With an electronic mail advertising and marketing software like GetResponse, all that you must do is choose one of many obtainable electronic mail templates (or construct one from scratch), fill out your copy, and customise the message to match your branding. Then, use an Autoresponder function and set the message to exit on day 0. It’s that easy!

4. Master your tagging and segmentation

Other efficient electronic mail record administration methods are tagging and segmentation.

Tagging helps you to assign tags based mostly on the recipient’s actions. For instance, in the event that they used a reduction code out of your welcome electronic mail, you could possibly assign them a tag “welcome-offer-converted.”

Segmentation, nevertheless, divides your viewers into smaller teams that share frequent traits. For instance, when you’ve got an internet retailer, you could possibly break up your viewers into two segments – clients who offered you the advertising and marketing consent and clients who didn’t consent to obtain advertising and marketing communications.

Naturally, there are numerous extra methods you could possibly phase your viewers. If you’d wish to be taught a number of others, take a look at our detailed guide to email segmentation.

The function of each tagging and segmentation is to get to know your viewers higher and to have the ability to tailor your communication to their wants. By doing so, you may enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns each when it comes to ROI in addition to deliverability.

Contact card view in GetResponse displaying recipient’s tags and exercise

5. Reactivate unengaged subscribers

Do you’ve got unengaged subscribers? You know, individuals who haven’t opened any of your emails or didn’t click on any of the hyperlinks in, say, 90 days?

Typically, this unengagement stems from:

• People ignored a number of of your emails, and the ISP began filtering your messages into the spam folder.
• People are not taken with a given class or already purchased a product that serves their wants.
• People have moved to a different location or modified jobs, and your provide’s not related and even reaching them.

It’s pure, and you shouldn’t be upset that this occurs. However, you shouldn’t simply ignore it and proceed focusing on your viewers within the hope they’ll immediately grow to be or engaged.

You needs to be conscious that ISPs pay a variety of consideration to how engaged their customers are along with your content material. If a big variety of your recipients present no curiosity, a big share of your emails shall be both delivered to the junk folder or under no circumstances.

Therefore, what you must do is just be sure you often reengage your unengaged subscribers both by way of manually despatched campaigns or, higher but, automated sequences.

Here’s an instance of a advertising and marketing automation workflow inside GetResponse that’d aid you run this kind of marketing campaign on autopilot:

Reengagement advertising and marketing automation workflow

Note: In this workflow, we’ve used a phase that features individuals who’ve been on our record for greater than 180 days and have been acknowledged by our system as unengaged (their engagement rating was -3).

As an inspiration, right here’s an instance of a reengagement marketing campaign despatched by MVMT to subscribers who’ve grow to be unengaged. For extra, see these exceptional win-back electronic mail campaigns.

Reengagement electronic mail marketing campaign from on-line retailer MVMT

6. Automatically take away unengaged subscribers

So, what occurs in case your re-engagement campaigns don’t succeed? Ideally, after a number of failed makes an attempt, you’d both suppress these contacts out of your future mailings or take away them out of your record altogether.

While this will likely appear to be a drastic method, particularly for small companies the place each lead counts, you must contemplate simply how a lot dangerous deliverability may have an effect on your backside line. It’s virtually at all times cheaper to draw new contacts who’d be completely satisfied to do enterprise with you.

So how do you do that? There are two methods to hold out this course of – the handbook means and the automated means.

The handbook means requires that you simply search for these contacts simply the way in which you’d do when organising segments. For instance, right here we’ve appeared for contacts who haven’t opened any of our emails within the final 180 days and have been on our record for greater than 180 days.

(*12*)Contacts who’ve not opened any of our emails within the final 180 days

Once we’ve discovered this phase and did not re-engage them, all we have to do is choose all of them and click on the motion – “Delete from list.”

Now, the automated means requires an automation workflow. It may very well be a standalone workflow or simply an add-on to the re-engagement workflow we created within the earlier step. Here’s what this might appear to be:

Removing contacts from the record by way of a Marketing Automation workflow

This course of is way simpler, particularly when you’ve got an enormous scale, however it could actually additionally backfire, so watch out. You don’t wish to set your workflow circumstances too strictly, as it might prove that you simply’ll take away extra contacts than you’re buying by way of your lead technology efforts.

7. In each electronic mail, remind subscribers they opted into your electronic mail record 

The common electronic mail subscriber in your contact record receives 416 emails per thirty days from different lists they’re subscribed to. So you may think about how straightforward it may be for them to overlook they even signed as much as obtain your emails. 

And in the event that they don’t bear in mind they subscribed, chances are high they’ll cease participating along with your content material or, even worse, report your electronic mail as spam. This will harm your repute with mailbox suppliers like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and so on.

This is the place permission reminders are available in. In each electronic mail you ship, remind your subscribers that they selected to obtain your emails by signing up in your web site or touchdown web page and that they’ll simply decide out in the event that they wish to.

A permission reminder is a brief, easy assertion that reminds the reader who you’re and how they ended up in your contact record. And they’re often within the footer. Here’s example of a permission reminder from the New York Times:

Permission reminder within the electronic mail footer

Regardless of the place you’re on this planet, there are privateness legal guidelines that you will need to observe. For instance, in Canada, there’s the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). In the United States, there’s the CAN-SPAM Act, and within the European Union (EU), there’s the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

And these legal guidelines merely don’t tolerate spam and require you to have specific permission to ship advertising and marketing communication to your contacts. So in case your subscriber forgets they opted into your record and chooses to mark your electronic mail as spam, you could possibly get penalized.

Although, when you’ve gained preliminary consent to ship emails, you’re not required by legislation to incorporate permission reminders. But including them to your emails will aid you guarantee compliance, boosting your deliverability charge and your subscribers’ confidence in you.

8. Automatically take away bounced electronic mail addresses

There are two sorts of bounces – mushy and exhausting bounces.

The mushy ones are often short-term and imply {that a} mailbox couldn’t be reached at a selected second, e.g., as a result of the mailbox is full. The exhausting bounces, however, are everlasting. They imply that the e-mail handle is unreachable as a result of it’s, e.g., non-existent or invalid.

Even although mushy bounces don’t at all times imply bother, they might point out a wider concern. And as a good sender, you don’t wish to have excessive bounce charges – regardless of in case your bounces are exhausting or mushy. That’s as a result of excessive bounce charges present to the ISPs that your electronic mail record administration practices are lower than the usual.

And what may ISPs do in the event that they see that you simply’re appearing like that? They may postpone your electronic mail supply, briefly block your supply, or block you completely till you’ve made modifications to your practices.

Now, when you’re utilizing electronic mail record administration software program, usually, you don’t want to fret about bounce dealing with. Tools like GetResponse handle bounces mechanically and take away invalid electronic mail addresses and different contacts that trigger exhausting bounce after two makes an attempt and those that return a mushy bounce after 4 makes an attempt (in some particular conditions, like mailbox full, after 30 days).

On prime of managing bounces for you mechanically, GetResponse additionally supplies you with real-time analytics by way of which you’ll see how your electronic mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign is performing. One specific report reveals you in-depth data in your bounce charge and breaks down the sorts of bounces (additionally by area) that had been returned in your send-out.

9. Use a scoring system to gauge engagement

When you employ a scoring system to gauge the engagement of every subscriber in your electronic mail record, you’ll be capable to measure their engagement charges.

If your electronic mail advertising and marketing software program helps you to do that, it’s a goldmine. 

For occasion, in GetResponse, you may allocate particular person scores (say, 10 factors) to every contact or subscriber that performs sure capabilities. In the identical means, you may deduct factors from their engagement scores once they don’t take sure actions set by you. 

Adding and eradicating scoring factors based mostly on contact exercise in Marketing Automation.

So increased scores equal more healthy and happier subscribers or clients.

And whenever you mix a scoring system with automation workflows, you may:

• Assign factors to chose actions and behaviors.
• Assign factors to customers with specific attributes (e.g., not utilizing a free electronic mail area)
• Build reward packages for essentially the most priceless subscribers.
• Use scores reflecting engagement and worth as you refine particular person subscriber profiles.
• Create early warning techniques to set off the results of declining engagement.

10. Send customized electronic mail sequences based mostly in your scoring system

Assuming you’ve set your electronic mail software program to offer subscribers ten factors for every exercise they carry out, you may set off sure emails to be despatched to them since they’re engaged and responding to your campaigns.

For occasion, you may arrange a situation like this in your electronic mail automation software program: 

Marketing automation workflow with three observe ups checking if the consumer visited the take a look at web page

When a subscriber will get at the very least 40 scoring factors > ship them an electronic mail persuading them to purchase your on-line course. If they don’t purchase the course or reply to your electronic mail in two days > ship them a follow-up electronic mail. If they don’t reply in one other two days > ship one other follow-up electronic mail. If they nonetheless don’t purchase > don’t ship any extra emails and subtract their scoring factors.

Sending emails to your subscribers based mostly on their engagement scores will additional aid you ship emails to the proper individuals and on the proper time. And it will enhance your engagement and conversion charges.

11. Use A/B testing to find out what works

If you’ve been doing advertising and marketing for any period of time, you’re in all probability acquainted with how A/B testing works. But if not, A/B testing or break up testing is an experiment the place you create two (or extra) variations of the identical marketing campaign to see which one works greatest. 

At the tip of your experiment, the variation that wins turns into what you retain working with to get the perfect outcomes.

With A/B testing experiments, you may measure the efficiency of your emails to find out which is handiest. And listed below are some examples of parts to check:

• Subject traces
• Headers
• Hero photographs
• Main provide
• Length of emails
• How colour impacts your conversions
• Layout types
• Headlines and content material
• Images and movies
• Navigation parts

The extra you run testing, the higher you’ll perceive your audience and the higher your deliverability, engagement, and conversion charges will grow to be.

GetResponse has an whole part devoted solely to A/B checks. Creating lovely messages is a breeze with our state-of-the-art editor.

If you’re , right here’s what the AB take a look at configuration appears like inside our software.

Split testing performance permitting you experiment along with your electronic mail campaignsSplit testing experiment configuration – selecting your viewers measurement

Heads up, you may select to have the profitable design be despatched out mechanically to the remainder of your viewers. This will prevent time and aid you launch your electronic mail campaigns extra effectively.

12. Switch electronic mail service suppliers (ESP)

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what number of electronic mail record administration greatest practices you employ, switching electronic mail service suppliers could also be your greatest guess.

One of the largest causes to change is deliverability. If your deliverability charges are low, you may strive some greatest practices to bump it again up. But if no matter something you strive, your charges nonetheless stay low, then you must contemplate switching your electronic mail service supplier.

Naturally, when shifting between suppliers, you’ll wish to just be sure you migrate the important data like:

• your electronic mail templates,
• contacts together with contact tags and different private attributes,
• segments and suppression lists,
• types and touchdown pages,
• automation workflows.

On the opposite hand, you’re higher off when you skip these throughout your migration:

• contacts who unsubscribed out of your lists,
• contacts who bounced and ought to have been eliminated,
• contacts who reported your emails as spam.

And when you’re ever contemplating switching to GetResponse, it’s straightforward emigrate contacts out of your present supplier into your GetResponse record. You can add 1000’s of contacts together with their customized fields inside minutes. 

Email record administration software program to contemplate

Now that you realize all of the record administration greatest practices, it’s time to go over the important thing instruments that’ll improve your advertising and marketing technique:

Forms and popup software program – These instruments will aid you construct your subscriber record the proper means, utilizing trendy type designs with loads of focusing on choices.

Most in style choices: WisePops, OptiMonk, and GetResponse.

Email advertising and marketing software program – Your electronic mail advertising and marketing platform will aid you handle your electronic mail lists, run electronic mail advertising and marketing campaigns, and report in your outcomes. Most electronic mail advertising and marketing instruments may also aid you develop your electronic mail lists and preserve the information updated.

Most in style choices: GetResponse, Mailchimp, Constant Contact.

Email validation software program – In case you’ve bought an outdated subscriber record or individuals are making errors when signing up by way of your types (a typical concern with paper types), you’ll wish to use electronic mail validation instruments to confirm them first earlier than importing them into your electronic mail advertising and marketing software and CRM.

Most in style choices: ZeroBounce, Bouncer, Kickbox.

Customer relationship administration – CRMs are used to maintain all the information about your contacts and your interplay with them in a single place.

Most in style choices: ZOHO, Zendesk, Salesforce.

Improve your electronic mail advertising and marketing by way of electronic mail record administration

Email record administration is a necessary a part of any electronic mail advertising and marketing technique. And with it, you’ll enhance your ROI and enhance your contact record high quality over its amount. 

Good factor you’ve got this information for free. Now, go on, use what we’ve shared right here to get your electronic mail record organized. Keep sending related and customized electronic mail campaigns to your subscribers! The enchancment within the backside line will make all of your electronic mail advertising and marketing efforts price it!

And when you’re contemplating switching to a brand new electronic mail advertising and marketing supplier, you’re welcome to strive GetResponse – utterly free. Equipped with our instruments, you’ll discover electronic mail record administration straightforward and pleasant.

Grab this infographic and keep on observe

Want to save lots of this data for later? Grab our free infographic highlighting the strategies we’ve described on this article and use it to remain on observe along with your electronic mail advertising and marketing campaigns.

To obtain the infographic in full decision, head over to our GetResponse Resources right here or click on on the infographic instantly.

12 Email List Management Best Practices – Infographic. Click the picture to view the infographic in full decision.