Trim the Certain Deadwood from Your Email List

Every mailing list has them: hundreds, maybe thousands, of recipients who haven't opened, clicked or responded to your email messages for years. They seem harmless enough - the addresses don't bounce and the subscribers don't file spam complaints or unsubscribe - but they actually increase your costs and reduce the accuracy of your open, click and conversion rates.

Time to get out the big axe and clear out that deadwood!

Here's how we and some of our EmailLabs clients have removed nonresponders, without trashing good email addresses:

1. Identify the nonresponders - We segmented our list, using EmailLabs' Most Active Subscriber report, to isolate those email addresses that had no actions associated with them - opens or clicks - for at least three years.

2. Create a new list - We created a new list comprised only of these nonresponders, who would then receive the "reopt-in" email. If someone clicked the reopt-in link, the action would simply capture the action in a newly created data field.

3. Send an email with these elements:
   • Text format in case an HTML issue caused a block or triggered a spam filter.
   • Subject line: Special Notice Regarding Your Subscription (or something similar).
   • Personalized greeting and subscriber details.
   • Date when the subscriber joined the list.
   • Reopt-in link.
   • Link to recent issues or current offer.
   • An unsubscribe link and statement that if they don't reopt-in, the subscriber will be removed from the list.

4. Track responses - Monitor results from the message to see if anyone opted in to the new list.

5. Remove nonresponding addresses - Our first "deadwood" email went to a bit less than one percent of our subscribers who had not opened or clicked on a single email in more than three years. We received zero responses or reopt-ins, not that we expected any, and felt confident that we weren't going to delete active addresses. We then unsubscribed these nonresponders from the original list.

Why do these people (addresses) lurk on your list but never respond? A few reasons, including:

• They've left a company but their email address is not disabled
• They've abandoned or simply rarely access an email account
• For various reasons, the email has been blocked or filtered since day one
• As a text-only version subscriber, they simply never click a link
• And perhaps least likely, a valid subscriber who has lost interest but simply chooses to never respond or unsubscribe.

Having tested the removal procedure with the "ancient and safe" three-year plus subscriber time frame, we'll be going back to the list again to remove more recent inactive subscribers.

This article on list inactivity in our Resource Center will give you details on how to segment your list to isolate nonresponding opt-ins: "Combat List Inactivity by Older Opt-Ins" 

Here's the email we sent, with the subject line -
"{Intevation Report} Special Notice Regarding Your Subscription":

Dear Reader,

As a valuable subscriber to EmailLabs Intevation Report, we want to
make sure we are meeting your needs.

Our records, however, show that you've been a subscriber since February 28, 2006, but have never read our newsletter.

If you would like to continue to receive our award winning newsletter (Best B2B Newsletter as voted by readers of ClickZ), please click the link below to re-opt in:

http://www.emaillabs.com

Not sure? View some recent issues of the newsletter:

http://www.emaillabs.com/resources_enewsletter.html

No longer wish to receive the Intevation Report?

To unsubscribe, send an email to: intevationreport@emaillabs.com with the address: email@address.com in the subject line or simply do nothing and we will remove you from our subscriber list.

Thanks,

Loren McDonald
Editor