The Top 8 things Every Email Marketer Should Know About Data Cleaning and Hygiene

Having a clean, responsive email list is the goal of every email marketer.  But even if you think your list is “clean” there could be hidden issues within your list that are causing your sends to end up in spam folders, cause ESP’s and ISP’s to delay delivery or worse, prevent delivery altogether.

Here are the top eight things every email marketer should know about data cleaning and email hygiene, Everything you need to know to insure smooth delivery and ROI.

1)  Email verification and hygiene are not the same.

Email hygiene refers to the individual cleanliness of emails on your lists.  Are these email safe to send to?  On the surface, many email addresses look legitimate, but could in fact be spam traps or addresses of known complainers, among others.  Removing all “dirty” addresses from your list can greatly boost your sender score and deliverability.

On the other hand, your list may be full of unverified data.  Email addresses that are illegitimate or disposable.  Are these emails deliverable?  Unverified addresses can be caused by purposeful bad inputs, or simple errors by the users during their data input.   Either way, unverified addresses can cause big issues.  ESP’s and ISP’s grade your efforts on the legitimacy of the data you send to.  If you have bad data on your list, and you’re sending to it, you can easily find your sends ending up in junk.

2)  You need to be on the lookout for the following issues:

1. 1. Hard Bounces
   2. Syntax Errors
   3. Typo-Emails
   4. Spam Traps
   5. Bots
   6. Disposable Emails
   7. Complainers

Having one or more of these issues can crush your deliverability and ROI.  It’s important you have real-time capabilities to examine this data and prevent your sends from ending up in the junk folder graveyard.

3)  Dirty and unverified data: The effects on deployment

Sending emails to bounces lowers your sender reputation and decreases deliverability.  Sending to spam traps and complainers can get your IP/Domain blocked, absolutely crushing your business.  Your data must be clean and verified to get in-boxed.

4)  Negative impact vs positive results

The lower the quality of your data, the higher the chance your emails end up in junk.  This is a no-brainer.  The higher quality data you send to, the better chances you have to get continually in-boxed.  Good data quality means higher sending quality and higher deliverability metrics.

5)  When and how to implement hygiene and verification

Before sending any emails, you need to know precisely how much damaging data and addresses reside in your list.  So email hygiene and data verification should be done immediately with your existing data.

For new harvesting efforts, you should be conducting hygiene and verification in real-time as you build your list.  By using EmailOversight’s API, you can prevent these harmful addresses from entering your list in the first place.  Routine maintenance should always be conducted, and having a real-time dashboard can make this a snap.

6)  How often should you do it?

Hygiene and verification of your data should occur before every send.  A routine maintenance schedule for your lists should occur every 30 to 90 days to ensure no harmful addresses have infiltrated your lists.  During new lead gen efforts, you should use EmailOversight’s API to ensure the validity and hygiene of each new address entering your list.

7)  Why hygiene and verification are so important

1. Keeps Data Clean and Deliverable
2. Keeps IP and Domain Reputation Healthy
3. Prolongs the Life of Mailing Resources
4. Increases Delivery Metrics
5. Improves Sender Scores and Quality
6. Helps In-boxing and Helps Boost ROI

8)  Choose a great service with proven results

When you choose a service to help you keep your email lists clean, verified and in-boxed, be sure you know they are:

1. Reputable: Known and trusted within the industry
2. Knowledgeable: Have detailed knowledge of issues and solutions
3. Helpful/Customer Service: They put your business first
4. Cost Effective: Services that can boost your ROI
5. Accurate: Top notch data hygiene and verification with incredible accuracy

A clean email list, using regular email hygiene and data verification from EmailOversight allows you to continue the two most important parts of your email marketing business.  In-boxing and revenue growth.

Our powerful application programming interface cleans and verifies addresses in real-time, as you’re harvesting them.

You see, the importance of clean and verified email addresses cannot be stressed enough.  It’s paramount to a successful email marketing business.  And EmailOversight is here to help you be an even more successful email marketer.