You do more harm than good when you send to a bad email address. So, again, don’t get caught up in the quantity over quality mentality of in-house email lists. That quantity could come back to haunt you and make your precious list worth about, oh, nothing. And “nothing” isn’t any kind of quantity at all!
Here’s the deal: You only get email marketing ROI when you a) get your email into an inbox, b) get your email opened, and c) get your email acted upon. But each of those three things requires the preceding one. Meaning, if your email isn’t delivered, you’re nowhere.
That’s obvious, I’m sure. But if it’s that obvious, why do so many businesses continue to send to bad email addresses that a) won’t get the email, b) won’t open the email, and c) won’t act upon the email? An obsession with numbers is my guess. The higher the number of email addresses on your in-house list, the better – or at least thats a common thought.
Every time you send to a bad email address, you’re putting your online sending reputation at risk, and that could lead to you being blacklisted and not being able to get into any inboxes at all.
That’s why scrubbing bad email addresses is an email deliverability best practice, especially when you’re dealing with legacy data. If your list is more than 18 months old, you’ll have bad email addresses, guaranteed. And when you mail to it, all those hard bounces will work against your online sending reputation.
Let ClickMail scrub the bad ones for you. Even if you only end up with 60% of the names you used to have, you’ll know those 60% have value…and won’t damage your reputation!
About the Author: Sharon
