Time to clean up email lists for holiday campaigns

According to Responsys' "Retail Guide to the Holiday Season 2011" the average retailer began dispatching holiday season emails on October 17 last year, 2 days earlier than in 2009 and 11 days earlier than in 2008.

While developing timely, creative and engaging email campaigns is paramount, there is something else that's just as important but often overlooked in the race to be first- list management.

In preparation for the dispatch of holiday email campaigns marketers must ensure their lists are up-to-date and accurate to protect ROI and maintain a healthy reputation among consumers and ISPs alike.

Misspellings and typos entered during email acquisition need to be identified and amended. Too many "unknown user" bounces associated with an IP address via a particular ISP could lead to blocking or blacklisting. Tools are available that will correct obvious and common errors such as 'bob#gmail.com' or 'sally@yahoocom'.

Distribution email addresses such as sales@ or postmaster@ should also be removed, as should any email address with the word "spam" in it.

Inactive subscribers should be approached at this time. A series of re-marketing campaigns, or a straight-forward "do you wish to continue to subscribe?" communication, should weed out those who no longer wish to be contacted.

Bear in mind, too, that an opting-out consumer may be expressing their desire to no longer receive emails but may be open to staying connected via social channels.

Self-serve lead generation and targeted email marketing platform Marketfish has just announced the launch of their "Clean Data Dream Team", reports Adotas, Before being used lists are cleaned using 60 different filters.

Tags: bounce rate, email marketing, email remarketing, email sender, list hygience, list management, ROI, sender reputation