Why “Less is more” when it comes to increasing your email conversion rate

It’s often assumed bigger is better when it comes to your email database. After all, if you’re sending lots of emails out all the time to a large number of people, you’re bound to get more interest.

If only it was so simple. As counter-intuitive as it is, the ‘throwing lots at the wall to see what sticks’ approach could actually be harming your efforts.

Your email marketing campaigns might not be achieving your goals because your list contains too many invalid or illegitimate emails. It’s far better to have fewer, but highly engaged subscribers in a nice clean email list, than a database with lots of inactive subscribers or dangerous email addresses.

Poor email list management can lead to bad results

There are a number of problems with having a large amount of invalid emails on your contact lists.

Firstly, there are the obvious reasons of low open and click rates. But secondly and more importantly, it can lead to issues with email deliverability thanks to spam traps – messages sent to these addresses could end up being blocked from reaching their recipients.

What Are Spam Traps?

These are email addresses used anti-spam companies in an attempt to catch mail spammers. These addresses often no longer belong to a real person and so – the reasoning goes – nobody should be sending messages to them.

When an email is sent into one of these addresses, it will flag the sender (you) as a spammer and damage your sender reputation. This is why you should avoid buying lists of emails, as you have no control over how many email address are up to date and not spam traps.

It’s thought up to 30% of contacts on a typical email mailing list are liabilities – a mix of spam traps, unengaged, bouncing email address and other bad email addresses. The more marketing emails you send to these address, the more your sender reputation will be hurt and the less chance there is of your emails being seen.

It’s Already Costing You Money

Most email marketing services charge a monthly fee based on the number of email subscribers that you have. So as your mailing list grows, the price of maintaining it goes up, eventually you will reach a point where it costs hundreds (or even thousands) a month.

What is email list cleaning?

Email list cleaning or “scrubbing” is the process of regularly checking your email lists by removing spammy, duplicate, or invalid email addresses and unengaged or inactive subscribers, and honouring unsubscribe requests. This ensures you’re working with consistent, clean, and trusted data.

Your goal is to keep your list up to date, accurate and useful. You want to make sure you’re giving people what they want and are not wasting their time or your money.

Illustrative example only – not a guarantee

How to Clean your Email List

If you haven’t done so already, now would be a good time to clean up your email list. Here are some tips to get you started – apply these to your most frequently used lists/segments, then move onto others.

Remove Duplicate Emails

Sometimes people forget they’re subscribed to an email list and sign up for a second time. That’s how duplicates can end up in your email list. If you send an email to someone who has already received one from you, there’s a chance they’ll end up in their spam folder.

Remove Obvious Spam

Spam emails often look nonsensical, but they can also be surprisingly similar to common company names to try to look legitimate. However they can be easy to spot such as these examples:

[email protected]

[email protected]

Remove Consistently Bouncing Emails

If your bounce rate is above 3–5%, then your ISP may think that you’re sending spam and could blacklist your domain name or IP. You should regularly download a list of emails which have bounced and delete them from your email database.

Use a professional email list cleaning service

You don’t have to find spam email addresses manually, email validation services can do it for you. They will also compare your list to known/suspected spam traps or poor-quality email addresses. There are many out there such as: Blue Mail Media, Kickbox, Neverbounce, and more – each has its differing price points and USPs. Each service recommends email addresses that are unlikely to be delivered, but it will be up to you to remove those addresses.

Check your unsubscribe link

Make sure that your “unsubscribe” link is easily found and clear to understand – and make sure that the link is never broken!

Use double opt-in

More of a tip for keeping your email database clean, but the advantage of using a double-opt-in process is that you ensure that you have the consent of your audience, and guarantees a more interested / engaged recipients and less inactive subscribers.

What are the benefits of email list cleaning?

Simply put, you reach more potential customers and less spam folders. If you want email services such Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and Outlook, to deliver messages from you into their customers’ inboxes and avoid their spam folder, then your email sender reputation must be good.

Increased email conversion rate

With an improved email deliverability rate, you’ll now be able to send marketing messages to a more engaged audience. As a result, your email conversion rate will increase because the people who receive your message are more likely to buy from you than before.

Better open and click rates

When you send marketing emails only to people who are already interested in your brand, product and services, you’re reaching out to customers who are more likely to engage with you. This results in higher open and click rates, which is a key indicator to email service providers that you’re a legitimate sender.

Lower cost per email

You’re probably paying for each email address you send out even if they don’t get through. If you stop sending emails to people who don’t open them, rate them as spam, or unsubscribe from them, then your email delivery costs will decrease, offering a better return on investment.

The Take-Away: It’s About Quality over Quantity

While having a large subscriber base is good, it’s better to have a subscriber list that actually engage with your emails. If you don’t focus on building a quality, clean list as an ongoing part of your email marketing strategy, you’ll end up with a bunch of unengaged subscribers who won’t respond to your emails – and worse can damage your ability to reach the people who will!