Stay clean

Why list cleaning and deliverability checks pay off quickly

The immediate solution is “list cleaning”: List cleaning gets the work tool back on track, thus avoiding complaints and improving metrics. However, sooner or later, you are likely to experience the same problems if you treat your contact lists in the same way as before after “cleaning”. Therefore, in the long term, a change in data management and bounce management processes is usually the cheaper solution to avoid such problems in the future and maintain a high sender reputation.

That is why we recommend a three-step plan, which we are happy to assist you with all or individual steps:

Step 1: Reconciliation of existing contacts

Professional list cleaning removes the vast majority of incorrect, invalid or dangerous emails from a list. This includes:

• a syntax check of addresses and domains (if the email delivery tool does not automatically sort them out)
• detecting typos to protect against typosquatting (intentionally created domains that exploit common typos, such as “microfost.com” instead of “microsoft.com”),
• Check for the existence of domains and recipient mailboxes
• testing for automatic redirects (catch-all) and role accounts (info@domain.com),
• Examine the list for one-time addresses (trash emails), honeypots, and spam traps that can affect reputation.

Spam traps in particular are tricky because they look like valid email addresses and companies can write to such addresses — without bad intent — through careless data management.

Engagement indicators (click behavior, conversions, opens) should therefore also be considered when evaluating contact validity. In addition, a review of registration information (source and time stamp of registration) may reveal “outliers” in the registration volume, which indicate registrations by form bots that should be removed from the mailing list.

Step 2: Review of contact entry and bounce management processes

If a list is cleaned once, it then gradually starts to “pollute” again. Effective list cleansing therefore starts with entry or entry. Only valid email addresses should be included in the inventory. Email validation logics directly in the contact, order or registration forms, for example, are helpful. In this way, input errors or invalid email addresses can be identified in real time (even if employees manually enter consents obtained offline, for example). During such a check, you can also define that, when entering a throway/trash address or a role account, interested parties are asked to enter an actively used address.

The data sources themselves are also worth taking a closer look: Experience has shown that contacts made by yourself pose fewer deliverability problems than those from rented or purchased lists. When generating leads, the focus should therefore be on your own measures and take into account all contact points — whether online, offline, at the POS or at events.

It is also useful to check the bounce handling rules: Addresses for which a “hard bounce” is registered should be excluded from shipping. Just like contacts who have triggered a “spam complaint” against the sender. When using an email service provider (ESP), the shipping service provider takes over bounce management and it can be assumed that hard bounces and complainers are automatically excluded from sending. However, information about hard bounces or complaints should not only be collected on the ESP side, but should also flow back into the customer's CRM database so that no problems arise when changing platforms, for example.

Important: Not all companies are aware that when using a sending service (such as Amazon SES, Mailgun, Sendgrid or SparkPost), it is their responsibility to manage their bounce management and ensure that invalid contacts are not contacted multiple times. Neglecting bounce management can affect the sender reputation of your own shipping domain and lead to blockages and black listings.

And finally, in addition to the email marketing platform, companies often have other shipping tools, for example for shop transaction emails, event communication, sales and service emails, etc. Therefore, a review should definitely check which systems the company uses to send emails and whether bounces, unsubscribers, complaints, list unsubscribers or reply emails are received at these points, which should also be processed and considered in order to address deliverability problems at all levels in the future avoid.

Step 3: Adjustments in data and shipping management and deliverability monitoring

Cleaned lists, checked data sources and bounces — the only thing missing is where the emails are physically sent. All systems that are used to send email should be checked of delivery-relevant configurations and dimensions, including delivery control at the most important Internet service providers and email hosts, sender authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) including domain alignment, mail server configuration, IP reputation and black/white listing.

Data update processes can then be set up that transfer important information about hard bounces, cancellations and spam complaints back to your own CRM or customer database and take them into account in future campaign selections. Engagement indicators such as clicks and conversions should also be evaluated regularly in order to counteract inactivity and “migration” in a timely and targeted manner.

During actual shipping management, it is advisable to write to inactive contacts separately from active contacts. They should be removed from the email distribution list for regular email communication. Or you only ever add a certain percentage of inactive contacts to regular delivery. Reactivation campaigns in particular should be closely monitored in order to be able to cancel shipping in an emergency before too much damage occurs! Because although there is economic potential hidden in inactive contacts, you should consider how much long-term damage a reactivation campaign can cause in terms of sender reputation if subsequent campaigns end up in the spam folder of many recipients instead of in the inbox.

If you want to avoid problems in this area, you could also invest in a monitoring tool It's worthwhile that keeps a permanent eye on delivery rates so that you can react in good time in the event of deliverability problems.