How to keep your database up to date

Maintaining your database to the best standards is sometimes underestimated in email marketing. At GLOBO CLIK we believe that this is one of the keys to be successful in email marketing. There is no point sending the best email campaigns if you are sending it to subscribers that won’t open and let along read your emails. Maintaining your list over time will always bring you better results and higher respond rates.

You want to ensure that the subscribers who receive your emails tend to click on your links, visit your website or social media pages and consequently buy your products or book your services.

We always that less I more and this is a brilliant example since quality is always better than quantity with regards to your lists.

1. LET YOUR SUBSCRIBERS UNSUBSCRIBE IF THEY WANT TO

Ensure that the unsubscribe link is always visible in the footer section of your newsletter. They should be able to unsubscribe any time they want and also to change their preferences if you have available a preference centre page.

If you hide this option, it could become annoying for the subscriber and work against you since they might decide to complain or report you as spam.

2. IDENTIFY DUPLICATES

Once you start growing your database you will realise that duplicates are inevitable. This is something that happens to all of us and you need to ensure that you go through your data on a regular basis to eliminate any duplicates that might come in.

Check with your email service provider since it will likely have a system where duplicates are automatically deleted.

3. SET UP ALERTS

This is a good way of being more organised and consistent when keeping your database clean. If your email service provider automatically suppresses duplicates based on email addresses, you might want to also check duplicates based on names, surnames or other details. If you set this alerts in place in advanced, you will get notified instantly and will be able to make a decision whether is a duplicate or not.

4. DEAL WITH INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS

Inactive subscribers are the ones who don’t open your emails, don’t click anything and basically don’t respond to any type of campaign you’ve sent them. The reason behind this is unknown. They could be fed up or your emails, not find them interesting enough or even not have enough time for your products or services. You could try sending them a win-back email before you have sadly say goodbye to them.

A high number of inactive subscribers will show a lower open rate in your reports and a low open rate could potentially determine you as a spammer. Therefore, if you remove these inactive subscribers you will not just have a higher open rate but also improve your sender reputation!

5. SEND WIN-BACK CAMPAIGNS TO ENSURE RECONFIRMATION

This is your last shot to gain back inactive subscribers. By running a win-back campaign, you will be able to tell if your subscribers are really not interested in your anymore or if there is still hope to win them back.

6. VALIDATE YOUR EMAIL LIST

If you haven’t sent emails to this list for over a year you will definitely want to ensure that the list is clean. If you have subscribers that are no longer using those emails your reputation could be damaged and your campaigns will probably land in your subscriber’s junk folder.

There are a few tools online to clean your lists and improve email deliverability like Mailgun if you want a low budget software or alternatively Kickbox or BriteVerify. Try to keep your bounce rate by less than 10%. If you get over 20% is very likely that you will get blacklisted.