Maintaining a contact list for email campaigns requires more strategy than ever before. Why?
Your email marketing goes from the system you use to send emails, your Email Service Provider (ESP), to the Email Client your contacts use, like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. Plus, if you’re sending to a business address, the email may need to pass through a company firewall along the way.
With the growing importance of email as a marketing tool and the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Email Clients try to show their customers they understand them by putting the emails they think are most important at the top of the inbox to read first, or mark them as important. The emails they think a contact is least interested in may go farther down the inbox, get filtered to a special folder or junk, or not be delivered at all. The firewall at a company can choose to block emails too, based on their own evaluation.
What’s being used to rank your campaigns? When your company sends a lot of emails, you earn what’s called a sender reputation. The better your reputation, the better the delivery of your campaigns. The algorithms for reputation change, just like Search Engine Optimization or social media rankings. Some factors algorithms can pay attention to are spam complaints, opt outs, subject lines and open rates. Should you panic over one email with a slightly higher unsubscribe or lower open rate? No. Unless your email program is new, your reputation is built over time. You should pay attention to high and low metrics and adjust your strategy to ensure they don’t bring down your overall scores.
So how do you stay on the good side of the AI algorithms to get your message seen as a priority? This comes from having an email list strategy. For new lists, for lists making a change of what ESP they use, or for lists that have not been contacted in a while, use a warming strategy. This gradually ramps up your sending for each Email Client.
For ongoing email programs, you’ll want to segment your list based on engagement and interest. Use your segmentation to deliver relevant and timely content, based on what you know about a group of contacts. Include automated trigger campaigns that deliver highly relevant content based on an action taken like visiting your website or placing an order. Pay attention to specific engagement metrics that tell you how contacts and Email Clients see your performance, and adjust your sends as needed. Clean your list from completely dormant contacts and re-engage inactive contacts.
List strategy will continue to change and adapt as algorithms change and as Email Clients put new filters in place. Having a strategy to keep your list clean and using email methods that maintain a good sender reputation will help keep your message reaching your best customers and prospects.