A great email list is one of the best ways to generate buzz about your company. Unfortunately, many businesses are still in the dark about what constitutes a “great” list. These businesses continue to send emails to inactive or unreceptive addresses, and typically do more harm than good! To ensure that your list is squeaky clean make sure to follow these guidelines:

Never use third party lists

The effectiveness of email marketing has led many companies to take the easy way out and purchase email lists from third parties. This is an easy way to inflate your list, but the vast majority of addresses purchased will be out of your target market, unresponsive, or, worst of all, may treat your unsolicited emails as spam.
To keep your email list clean, make sure to only use the email addresses of customers that have explicitly chosen to receive marketing messages from your company. 

Remove inactive addresses, and addresses that bounce

One of the primary ways that ISPs decide whether your email is a legitimate message, or spam, is by looking at the engagement rates of their users.  If your click and open rates are constantly underperforming the industry averages you could end up on a blacklist.
Make sure to keep your engagement rates high by removing addresses that never open your emails, and addresses that have experienced hard bounces more than once.

Use the double opt-in

A double opt-in, or a subscription confirmation email, is one of the best ways to keep your list clean. By requiring subscribers to confirm that they have indeed requested to join your mailing list you ensure that only valid and active email addresses end up on your list.
Interested in learning more about email marketing? Make sure to check out the related articles just below this page.