Email Deliverability Drives Revenue Part II
List hygiene. I know, it’s a very sexy topic, right? Well, get ready to dive in because list hygiene is an essential piece of your overall email deliverability strategy that will help drive revenue. As I explained in Part One of the Email Deliverability Drives Revenue post, it’s all about getting to the Inbox. When B2B marketers are successful in getting to the Inbox, the percentages of conversion increase and that means more revenue.
Good list hygiene starts with managing the following:
- Meticulous list management:
– Unsubscribes
– Complaints
– Bounces (Hard and Soft)
– Use caution with list append and acquisition companies
If you actively monitor unsubscribes, complaints and bounces you will have a real understanding of key indicators of good deliverability. Or if you are new to this, start a baseline to measure against. For example, if you have a spike in unsubscribes or complaints from a recent campaign, check subject lines, the target audience or images used. Any of these things could affect the deliverability or use experience and degrade your deliverability score and overall success.
- Engagement includes:
– Opens
– Clicks
– TINS (This is Not Spam)
– ISP Panel Data
Why monitor opens, clicks, and others when all you care about are conversions? This helps draw a picture of overall success in targeting, subject lines and/ or content. The goal here again is getting to the Inbox, so if people are sharing your content, they received the content and are willingly sharing it. That is a good thing.
- Inactives
Inactives are actually a big deal in your overall deliverability score. Why? After a period of time, they start to degrade your reputation. Yes it is good that they are not unsubscribing or bouncing; however, better to get them engaged by launching a “Wake Up” campaign or “Reengagement” program to nurture these contacts back into the fold. If contacts are not interested in your message, it is not a bad thing to have them unsubscribe, otherwise, a “Wake Up” campaign can help get them engaged. The key is to force action.
Keeping a clean, active email list is key to achieving good deliverability. Strive to continually segment and prune email lists to get the results you want and get into the inbox.
Author: Chris Arrendale, CIPP/US @arrendale Director, Email Deliverablity and Privacy Practice, ANNUITAS
