Email Hygiene Services: What Are They and How Can They Help Your Business Succeed?

The world’s first email was sent in 1971—more than five decades ago.

Since then, email marketing has become one of the most popular ways for businesses to communicate with their customers, and even acquire new ones.

But that’s no surprise… because not only is email marketing extremely affordable for businesses of all sizes… it’s also an efficient method of communication that is versatile enough to let businesses customize their messaging and target different segments of their audience.

That said, email marketing does have its challenges, and things like low open rates, high bounce rates, and spam complaints can plague even the most successful email marketers and business owners.

Fortunately, there exists a special set of tools that can easily help solve all of these issues, and they’re called email hygiene services.

In this informative blog post, you’re going to discover exactly what email hygiene services are, why they’re important, and how they can help you improve your email marketing results (and increase your bottom line as a result).

So, let’s dive right in and answer the most obvious question on your mind:

What Are Email Hygiene Services?

In short, email hygiene services are a unique set of tools that have been designed to remove invalid, duplicate, and inactive email addresses from a company’s email list, which is why they’re regularly used by email marketers to clean their lists and make sure they are up-to-date.

There are several different types of email hygiene services available that you can start using today.

These include list cleaning services (which help to remove all the invalid and inactive email addresses from your lists), email verification services (which check that the addresses on your lists exist and are correct), and email validation services (which takes email verification a step further by not only checking that your emails are valid, but that they are also safe to send to).

Why Is Email Hygiene Important?

Email hygiene is extremely important for email marketers, and the reason for that is simple:

Poor email hygiene can have disastrous effects on a business’s marketing efforts.

When you don’t maintain your email lists, they can become cluttered with invalid, inactive, and even fake email addresses.

These “faulty” addresses can lead to certain consequences that can put your company’s reputation on the line and potentially tank the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

A common consequence of poor email hygiene is a high bounce rate.

A bounce refers to an email that you send not being delivered successfully to your intended recipient.

Bounces can happen for many reasons, including sending to an invalid email address, an inactive email account, or a full mailbox.

Now, if one or two of your emails bounce, that’s not a big problem…

But when email service providers spot that a large number are not being delivered successfully, they may flag you as a potential spammer, blocking your emails from reaching people’s inboxes and harming your business’s reputation.

Low open rates are another consequence of poor email hygiene.

It goes without saying that the emails you send to invalid or inactive email addresses won’t be opened.

Because open rates are an important metric used by marketers to measure the success of their email campaigns, when your open rates are being skewed by sending to invalid or inactive addresses, it can harm your future business decisions.

Spam complaints are another serious consequence of poor email hygiene.

Email hygiene services help remove dangerous addresses from your list.

These dangerous addresses include spam traps, bots, and spam complainers.

If you have these addresses on your lists, and you’re sending emails to them, it’s likely that you will be flagged as spam, which is why it’s important to get rid of them ASAP.

To sum up, email hygiene plays a crucial role in your email marketing efforts, because it helps you ensure that your lists are clean, up-to-date, and free from invalid or inactive email addresses.

What Benefits Can You Expect From Using Email Hygiene Services?

By ensuring that your email lists are clean and up-to-date, email hygiene services can bring about a whole host of benefits for your business.

Let’s go through some of the main ones you can start realizing today:

1. Increased deliverability.

One of the biggest benefits of using email hygiene services is that they can help you improve your email deliverability rates.

That’s because when all of the invalid and inactive email addresses are removed from your list, you’ll be reaching real people—the only recipients that matter.

The result is an improved sender reputation that will help you reach your customers (and not their spam folders).

2. Higher open rates.

Another benefit of using email hygiene services is that they can help you improve your open rates.

When your email list is packed full of invalid and inactive email addresses, your open rates suffer…

But by “pruning” these emails from your list, you can ensure that your emails get sent to your actual subscribers and have the highest chance of being opened.

3. Reduced spam complaints.

When your email list contains a large number of invalid and malicious addresses, the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam will skyrocket.

This can shred your sender reputation to pieces and negatively impact every one of your email marketing campaigns.

But when you use email hygiene services to clean your list and remove these bad apples, you automatically reduce the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam (and therefore increase the profit potential of your business).

4. Cost savings.

Many people don’t know this, but using email hygiene services can also help save you money.

That’s especially true if you have an extensive list, because the more names you have on your list, the more expensive it will be to maintain.

But by removing the invalid email addresses from your list, you can wind up potentially saving yourself tens of thousands of dollars a year.

5. Improved engagement rates.

By ensuring your email list is clean and up-to-date (and thanks to the increased deliverability rate this ensures), email hygiene services can also help you improve the level of engagement you see from your customers.

That’s because when you’re able to land in the inbox of the customers that are interested in your content, it’s a no-brainer that a higher percentage of them will be clicking on your emails, reading your messages, and purchasing your products.

With these huge benefits email hygiene services bring to the table, email marketers and businesses of all sizes have the ability to maximize the effectiveness (and profitability) of their email campaigns.

Getting Started Using Email Hygiene Services

If you want to get started using email hygiene services and experiencing all these benefits for yourself today, then you’re going to want to make sure you choose the right email hygiene service provider.

There are a variety of different criteria you should consider when making your decision.

Let’s go through them one by one:

• Pricing. The cost of email hygiene services can vary wildly depending on the provider you choose and the level of service that your business requires. That’s why we recommend that you choose a provider that offers transparent pricing that fits your budget.
• Reputation. It’s important that you choose a provider that has been “battle-tested”, so to speak. Look for one that has been tested by customers and has positive reviews and testimonials.
• Customer support. Great customer service is always a must. Your provider should have phone and email support so you can contact them if you have any issues, and also a knowledge base or a blog full of helpful content on their website so you can easily find answers to your questions regarding their service.
• Data security. In order to function, email hygiene services need to process the sensitive customer data on your list. Therefore, it’s important that you choose a provider that uses encryption, follows CCPA and GDPR rules, and makes a concerted effort to protect your data.
• Features. As you’ve learned, there are multiple different types of email hygiene services available that can help your business, such as email validation, verification, and list cleaning services. Some providers even have an API that you can integrate into your website. You should look for a provider that offers the array of features you need to help you achieve your marketing goals.

If you want to use an email hygiene service provider that ticks all of these boxes (and you don’t want to sink potentially hours of your time into searching for one), then we recommend that you give EmailOversight a try.

Not only is EmailOversight affordable, secure, and packed with features… you can also give it a test drive today completely free of charge.

To get started, all you need to do is click here now.

Best Practices for Maintaining Your Email Hygiene

Even if you use an email hygiene service, it’s still essential that you follow a few important “best practices” to get the best results out of your email marketing.

Here are the most important ones:

1. Regularly clean your email list: To reduce bounce rates, improve deliverability, and increase engagement, it’s important that you use email hygiene services on a regular basis to clean your email list. This helps your list from getting cluttered as new addresses find their way inside.
2. Avoid purchased lists: At first, purchasing an email list may seem like a “shortcut” to marketing success. Don’t be fooled—these lists are often loaded with invalid email addresses, spam traps, and often have low open rates (which is no surprise, because the subscribers didn’t subscribe to you personally).
3. Encourage subscribers to update their information: Every once in a while, it can be helpful to encourage your subscribers to make sure the information they have with you (such as their primary email address and preferences) is up-to-date. This helps to ensure that your emails reach them at their best address and ensures that the communications they’re getting from you are relevant.
4. Monitor email metrics: As a business owner and marketer, it’s important that you make sure to keep track of your email metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. This helps you identify any issues with your email campaigns, and helps give you insights that could improve your email marketing success further.
5. Follow email marketing laws: It goes without saying that you should be following all email marketing laws, like the CAN-SPAM Act, to ensure your emails are compliant (and won’t cause you any nasty legal issues in the future).

Conclusion

Email hygiene services are crucial for the email marketing success of any business, large or small.

These services can bring your business a plethora of benefits including increased deliverability, higher open rates, reduced spam complaints, cost savings, and Improved engagement rates.

To choose the best email hygiene service for you, we recommend that you make your choice based on five criteria including pricing, reputation, customer support, data security, and features.

And when you’ve found the email hygiene service provider you want to use, we also recommend that you follow these best practices:

• Regularly clean your email list to reduce bounce rates, improve deliverability, and increase your customer engagement.
• Avoid purchased lists (or find yourself disappointed with the results).
• Encourage your subscribers to update their information so you can reach them easier and send them relevant emails.
• Monitor your email metrics to identify issues and get better insights.
• Follow email marketing laws to ensure your emails are compliant.

To get started experiencing all the benefits of using an email hygiene service today, simply click here now to give EmailOversight a try.

(Remember, you can try it today completely free of charge.)