List Maintenance Practices
List Maintenance
A quality list consists of highly engaged subscribers who look forward to your emails. These subscribers have willingly opted in to receive communication from your brand and are eagerly awaiting your next messages. However, maintaining such list requires strict opt-in control, regular list checks, and campaign management
1. Double Opt-In
Double opt-in provides an extra layer of verification. Each new subscriber has to verify their opt-in from a confirmation email before they are added to your contact database.Using the double opt-in confirmation method significantly reduces the likelihood of spam addresses infiltrating your list. Consequently, any bots attempting to subscribe to your newsletter will be prevented from entering your list. This aids in evading potential spam threats and safeguards your sender's credibility.
2. Segment your Audience
Segmenting your audience by engagement levels and taking appropriate actions goes a long way in reducing spam, maintaining high reputation, and deliverability. Here are some of the standard segments you should implement in your list maintenance practices:
- Highly Engaged List (Past 90 Days)
- Low Engaged List (Past 90 to 180 Days)
- Inactive List (Past 180 Days)
- Old Subscribers (Past 365 Days)
With your list broken down into Segments you can now start applying List Maintenance practices:
Old Subscribers (Past 365 Days):
These subscribers should be removed from your list. Contacts older than a year significantly increase the chances of emails Bouncing. Now, that doesn’t mean that a year old subscriber cannot be highly engaged. Before removing those subs, you can send an email asking if they still want to receive emails moving forward. Note, this email should only be sent to contacts that are 1+ years old and are engaged. 
Inactive List (Past 180 Days)
These subscribers should be removed from your list. It’s quite natural for contacts to grow cold overtime and engage less and less with your content. If a sub does not engage for more than 180 days, just remove them. No need to risk generating negative metrics and getting 0 value back.
Low Engaged List (Past 90 to 180 Days)
These subscribers should be put into a re-engagement campaign. It’s good practice to remove them from your standard mailers and try to re-engage them with a specifically designed campaign.
Highly Engaged List (Past 90 Days)
If you’ve completed all steps outline until now, you should be left with a highly engaged list ready for your main marketing campaigns.
Email Sending Practices
Effective email sending practices are just as important as maintaining a high-quality email list. Here are some key practices to keep in mind:
1. Remind your subscribers why you’re emailing them
Your subscribers receive a ton of emails on a daily basis, so it's to forget why they subscribed for your emails. To help them remember why they are receiving emails from you add a note at the top of your message indicating how they were added to your audience.
2. Don't send too many emails
Sending too many emails, however, can have the opposite effect. Emailing your audience every day for 30 days or longer would likely irritate them and lead to an increase in your spam reports.
3. Add branding to your emails
Make sure to have your company logo at the top and bottom of your emails. Colours and images should also be aligned with the branding of your company domain.
4. Be consistent
You don't want people to forget about you. Send at least one relevant email every week.