140: Scrub Your Email List and Improve Your Deliverability

Are your emails ending up in the spam folder? Do you understand how and why that happens? On today's episode, I'm walking you through the process of scrubbing your list. Even if you've never done it before, it can greatly improve your email health and ultimately your deliverability. Come join me.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. Today we're going to talk about scrubbing your list and improving your deliverability. Now, as we get deeper into the fourth quarter, more and more emails are going out. Hopefully you're sending more and more emails right now. It's important to maintain a healthy list, and one of the ways that we can do that is by scrubbing it. So what does that even mean? What does list scrubbing mean? Email list scrubbing is really just the process of regularly cleaning your email list to remove inactive, invalid, or unengaged email addresses. It ensures that you are sending emails to a receptive audience, improving your email marketing performance. In simple terms, I call it trimming the fat, getting rid of people from your list that are weighing it down, costing you money and not bringing any value to your business. A clean list results in number 1, improved deliverability. That's what everybody wants. The ISPs are more likely to deliver your emails to the inbox rather than the spam folder. That's where we want to be. Every time we send an email, we want to be in the inbox. Number 2, it's going to create higher open rates for you. The more inboxes that you're in instead of the spam folders, the higher your open rates are going to be. And this ensures that people are seeing your stuff. And then the third thing is increased engagement. Email subscribers who actively engage with your emails are more likely to convert to buyers. Now I saw this study, it was put on by Data and Marketing Association, DMA. The average ROI for email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent. $42. That means if you're paying, say, $10 for your email provider, okay, so this is your cost. You pay for the email. As your list grows, it costs more. So for every $10 that I'm paying for my email provider to send emails, I'm gonna get back $420 for every $10. So for every $1 you spend, the average ROI for email marketing is $42. That is powerful, y'all. Your email list is like your ATM. You put the content in and money comes out. All right, not scrubbing your list can result in list decay. Now, list decay refers to like the gradual decline in the quality of your email list over time. It happens when your list kind of accumulates inactive or unengaged subscribers, invalid email address, and there's other issues that cause list decay. Let's talk about that a little bit because what we don't want is our list to have list decay. So here's, here's what list decay is. Email bounces. Have you ever looked at your bounce rate when you send an email? Bounced emails occur when the recipient's email address is invalid, no longer exists, or their mailbox is full. These can be hard bounces or soft bounces, and they can negatively impact your sending reputation. When you have negative impacts on your sending reputation, that's when you hit the spam folder. Okay, number 2, inactive subscribers. Inactive subscribers are individuals who have subscribed to your emails, but they have not engaged in your content or opened your emails for an extended period of time. Their lack of engagement or lack of activity can signal a loss of interest in your email, okay, which will hurt your deliverability. Number 3, are spam traps. Now, spam traps are emails set up by different ISPs, and they identify senders with poor list hygiene practices. So sending emails to spam traps can damage your sender reputation and deliverability. So we want to get them off of our list too. We don't want any spam traps on there. And then number 4 is unsubscribed contacts. If you continue to send emails to individuals who have previously opted out or unsubscribed from your email list, it damages your reputation and may also result in legal violations. Okay, when someone unsubscribes, let them. Goodbye. They are not for us. Do not keep sending to them. They're going to report you as spam. That's going to hurt your reputation, and you're going to be in other people's spam folders that you want to be in their inboxes for. It's not worth it, okay? Because when you continue to send to these types of people, you're going to have a few things happen. Reduce deliverability— that's the most important. If you accumulate too many bounces, inactive subscribers, and spam traps, they're going to flag your emails as spam. They're going to be rerouted into the recipient to the spam folder and they will not, or sometimes they won't be delivered at all. You ever send an email that says, you know, that you're sending it to say 4,000 contacts and it only ended up sending it to say 3,900 contacts? That's because it's not delivered at all. You don't have the deliverability for all those email addresses. Okay, it's also going to cause lower engagement rates. So inactive subscribers are unlikely to open, click, or engage in your email in any way. And this will result in lower open rates, lower click-through rates, and lower purchase conversions. So the lower that your percentages, the lower your metrics, the lower your stats are in your email provider, that shows that you're not sending engaging content. And that is more likely to, one, be sent to spam, and two, to lower all the engagement on anyone else that's on your list. Okay, we need the health of our list to be strong and we don't need to be in list decay. And the other thing is that it's going to damage your reputation. All of these things are going to damage your reputation. So email service providers, they're called ESPs, they monitor the sender reputation to determine if your emails should be delivered to the inbox or the spam folder. And a deteriorating list that has reduced deliverability, lower engagement rates, that's going to hurt your sender reputation. And you are going to be in their spam box. So we got to stay out of their spam. All right. So before we get to the step where we're ready to scrub the list, I want you to set up a re-engagement campaign. Okay. So what we're going to do is we are going to try to re-engage our— the dead part of our list. Re-engaging in that dead list is way more cost effective than going and growing your list. I always want you to grow your list. You're going to hear me say that, but it's just like your subscribers. Retaining them is so much more cost effective than getting new subscribers all the time. If we're always focused on acquisition and not retention, we're leaving a lot of money on the table. So let's make sure that we've done everything we can to get them re-engaged before we remove them. So here's what I want you to do. This is your re-engagement campaign. I want you to set up 2 to 3 emails that provide value to your email subscriber and remind them why they should open and engage with your emails. Your hook, your subject line is the most important thing here. We have to get them to open this email. What makes you open an email from someone? Okay. Think about that. If you haven't opened any of my emails in the last 90 days, what could I put on that subject line that would make you open? And I don't want to bait and switch someone. That's not effective either. I need to give them value so they continuously open my emails. I don't want them to just open an email today and not open another email from me from 90 days— for 90— from 90 days from now. That does me no good. I want to remind them of the value of my emails so that they are consistently opening, clicking, and engaging on my emails. So I put together some subject lines for you. I put 10 together, and these are really generic so that you could use them in your own industry. You can beef them up, you can tweak them, you can make them more of your own, but it's just a way to get you started and to get thinking about these 2 to 3 emails that you're going to send. So let me just run through them really quickly. Hey there, we've got some awesome stuff you'll love. They're going like, ooh, what's in there? Another one, long time no see, check out what's trending. You can take that further, like long time no see, check out what's trending at Framed. Check out what's trending with our new monograms. Check out what's trending with our most popular hoodie. Okay, so just use these as a way to brainstorm. Guess what? Something cool just dropped. Ready for a reunion? Shop new arrivals and more. Missed our updates? Here's the scoop. Time to catch up. Amazing finds inside. It could be time to catch up. We released our brand new hoodie line last week. Just use these as an inspiration to go off of. I tried to make them as generic as possible so that you could read that and get some inspiration. Calling all shoppers, your favorites await. Shop like it's the first time again. We're back and so are the deals. Discover what's new, it's time for some retail therapy. So those are just 10 subject lines that we put together. Now, if you want those in writing, just go ahead and text me because I'll send them over to your text. So just Grab your phone right now. I'm going to give you my number. I want you to text me the words subject lines. Okay. Subject lines to 940-204-0023. Just pause the podcast right here. Pull your phone out. Listen to that again. Go ahead and text me now because you'll forget by the time you get done listening. I already know. I already know. I'll send these two subject lines over to you right in a text. I want them to spark some interest for your re-engagement campaign. And with these subject lines, I'm trying to be fun and casual here. Let them know they're missing out on something. You don't have to lead with a discount. A lot of re-engagement campaigns lead with a percentage off or a coupon. You don't have to do that. That's not what this is all about. It's helping them fall back in love with your brand and your business again. And we don't have to always do that with a discount. The goal within re-engagement campaign is to get them to open the email and click over to your website. This will reengage them on your list. Okay. I love to segment an unengaged list and know how many people are on that segment before I send out this re-engagement campaign. And then I take a look back at that number before I scrub my list. So I'm looking at, okay, if I were to run a segment right now, of anyone that hasn't engaged with me with a certain amount of time. And I'm gonna walk you through that in just a minute and say that number is 2,384 people. I'm like, okay, I have an opportunity to reengage 2,384 people. I'm gonna run my re-engagement campaign. I'm gonna send 2 to 3 emails, maybe over a week's time period. Gonna come back next week and I'm gonna run that segment again. And I'm hoping it's considerably less. I'm hoping that I have re-engaged a big portion of that list. Okay, so you got to see those numbers before you send that re-engagement. That's what I'm trying to say. Take a look at those numbers so you can see the progress that you've made with your re-engagement campaign. Now, after you set up your re-engagement campaign, it's time to scrub your list. And I, and I use Klaviyo. You guys know that I use Klaviyo for my email CRM. And so I want you to set up some parameters. Around this segment. And this is what the same parameters you're going to use for your re-engagement campaign. The time frame that we put on how long it's been since they've opened an email really depends on how frequently you are sending emails. So typically when we run an unengaged segment, we're using 90 days, 120 days, or 180 days. Okay, so What we're doing is, because I send weekly emails, I like to use the 90 days for this unengaged segment. That's typically 12 to 20 emails. Okay, if I send one email a week over 90 days, that's 12 emails. Well, I send more than one email a week, so say we double that, that's 24 emails. So somewhere between 12 and 24, that's how many emails they would have received from me in the last 90 days. And they haven't opened them. Okay, so I've got a couple options here, so I want you to kind of just listen. And, and I'm very strategic with everything that I do, so there's a strategic way that I can actually scrub my list, and I do it in a couple ways. I'm going to kind of walk you through a couple of those ways. So the options I have for scrubbing that list— so I would put into Klaviyo, has received, say, I don't know, received 12 emails or 10 emails over the last 90 days and has opened 0 emails over the last 90 days, then I know that person has received at least 10 emails from me. They have opened 0 emails from me in the last 90 days. That's going to generate a segment of people. Okay, that's going to give me that number. Well, this is the list I'm going to send the re-engagement campaign to. I'm going to send this send my 2 to 3 emails out to this list. When I'm ready to scrub it, I can do a couple things. So once I have the segment built in Klaviyo, my options for scrubbing it is I can just exclude this segment from my regular emails. So if I have this segment of 90 days of people that receive my emails but not open them, when I get ready to send my weekly campaign this week, um, I can say Send to my list, exclude my unengaged segment, and then it's not going to send to those people. So automatically my open rates are going to be better. Okay, but I still have them in my email system and I can include them when I do a big promotion or something new and fresh and fun happening. Basically, I would only send to this segment a few times a year and not weekly like everybody else, not my engaged customers I'm sending weekly. This is going to help my overall list health because it will help my open rates, it will help my click rates, it's going to help with the overall health, but I still have them. So if I have a big promotion, I can go ahead and send it to them, but I'm not sending it regularly. So that's one option. The other option is I could suppress this list completely. So I'm not sending emails to them anymore at all. If they don't want to hear from you, they'll come back to your list at some point. I'm just removing these people. Like, listen, I gave y'all 12 to 24 chances to engage with me. You didn't. You're clearly not interested. I'm getting you off my list. I'm going to quit sending to you, and then I'm also going to quit paying for you in Klaviyo. Because the bigger your list, the more you're sending to them, the more you pay for them. So that's really two options. I can hold them and use them for those big promotions, or I could just completely suppress them. And you want to suppress them versus delete them because inside Klaviyo, if you suppress them, you can still see their buying behaviors when they're on your site. You can still see browse abandonment, you can still see all those things. So we just want to suppress them, we don't want to delete them. Or there's a third option, and I like this one. I use this one a lot. I could create a second segment with a longer timeframe, say 180 days or even a complete year. And I could suppress the longer list and keep my 90-day list around for those big promotions. So say I was going to be super conservative with scrubbing and I put in my segment has received, I don't know. 20 emails over the last 365 days and has opened 0 emails in the last 365 days. That is someone that has been on my list for an entire year, basically, and not opened a thing. Get rid of those people. That's an easy suppress. Hold on to your 90-day people that haven't opened. Try re-engaging them and hit them with your big promotions. There's lots of ways that you can do this. There's not a one fix solution, but you need to do something. We want to improve our email performance. So the goal here is really to measure this performance. It's important for you to see the impact that scrubbing and/or excluding these segments can have on your email performance. What are your open rates right now? You took a look at your open rates right now. What if you could get a 5% increase on that? That's big. I want you to look at your open rates. I want you to look at your click rates, and I want you to look at your purchase conversions. And when you start to scrub your list, those are going to increase. And the higher these stats are, the more healthy your list is and the less likely you're going to end up in someone's spam folder. Is it better to have a smaller list that is much healthier or a bigger list that is dragging your list health down? Y'all know the answer to this. Having the right people on your list is much more important than the vanity metrics of having a big list. It's the same with our social media, and I talk about it all the time. It's better. To have a smaller following of the right person than it is to have a large following of the wrong person. When you have the right people on your email list, you're going to have better performance, which results in better deliverability. You're going to have lower costs because your list isn't full of people that aren't even buyers, and your campaigns are going to have much more effectiveness because they're going to be in the inbox of the right people. Now, the last part of this that I want to make sure that you do is I want you to make a plan every 6 months to scrub your list. And here's— I want you to do this today. Let's get re-engaged. Let's get a re-engagement campaign out there. And then I want you to go block it on your calendar right now. From 6 months from now, I'm going to do another re-engagement campaign and I'm going to scrub my list. It's kind of like changing air filters. If I don't add it to my calendar, I totally forget when the last time I did it and when it's time. Like, I'm thinking right now, when's the last time I changed the filters in my air conditioner? It's probably been a minute. I probably need to get up in my attic and do that because I don't have it on my calendar. I have no idea when I did that. So go ahead and block it out from 6 months from now. And every 6 months when you do it, go block it on your calendar again, that it's time to do it again. We have to keep our list health up and scrubbing that is going to greatly improve your deliverability.