This post is about a common email marketing problem I’ve seen when working with SMBs + the solution.
A few points to understand the problem:
Keep your list clean. This means you should remove every subscriber who is not interested in your products or offers. This is an active responsibility as long as you're sending emails and growing your list.
If a lead has not engaged your email in the last 3-6 months (I recommend 3 months if you send multiple weekly emails), they need to go.
(I also like to test them by segmenting those accounts that don’t click, promoting a low priced or free offer and cleaning out those who still don’t click through.)
Why?
Email engagement is how you gauge interest in your stuff. And the lack of it over an extended period is a trusted way to tell who’s interested in your stuff and who’s not.
It’s also what their EPs look at before limiting your visibility.
I once tested a new lead magnet on a tiny ad budget. We pulled in around 300 leads that day, but only 50 of them confirmed their subscription. Upon investigation, we discovered that most of our emails were marked as spam by email providers.
We had to pause the ad to fix the problem, and then manually copied and emailed the rest directly to check their spam and confirm their subscription.
For some of you wondering why your emails don’t convert as well anymore, it’s probably because 130k subs from your 150k list size get your emails sent to promotion or spam by their EPs. This means that you’re effectively selling to only 20k people.
If we assume a CVR of 27% on your list, effective visibility to 20k subs will give you 5,400 sales. While after cleaning out the deadweights, you could be getting 27k sales from effective email delivery to 100k. Which do you prefer?
(If you haven’t already realized, if the EPs truncate your email deliverability, it could kill your business.)
Every new lead you get will fall into one of three categories:
Interested: Your ideal customer. They need your products or services, are open to them, and can afford to pay for them for as long as you want them to. (ALWAYS KEEP)
Passers-by: They signed up to buy one or a few products but will lose interest within months or a year. (KEEP AS LONG AS THEY ENGAGE. CUT WITHIN 6 MONTHS OF THEIR LAST ENGAGEMENT)
Uninterested: They signed up to get your freebie or buy your low-priced offer, but that’s all. These could also be bot accounts employed by your competitors to fill your list with bloat and kill your domain rep over time. (CUT WITHIN 3-6 MONTHS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT. ALSO EMPLOY DOUBLE OPT-IN AND EMAIL VERIFICATION AS PROTECTIVE MEASURES)
As you can see, the responsibility to keep your list clean is in your hands. If you don’t do it, there could be dire consequences for your biz.
So, that’s the end of this post. I’ll be in the comments if you have any questions. My DMs are open if you need professional help.
BONUS PRO TIP 1 -- While it’s best practice to regard subscribers who don’t engage anymore as though your emails are already marked as spam in their inbox, and to cut them off. Sometimes, these people might just be victims of the behaviors of others. So, what you can do is send them a series of emails (three is enough) to let them know that you will be removing their emails for lack of engagement on a set date unless they either reply to your email or click a link.
And then, on the final email to be sent at the cut-off date, you could leave instructions on how to get back on the list (since they probably did not see the email before that date – happens if your emails go to spam). Subscribers who are interested in your offers will follow through when they see it. Those who aren’t interested will ignore it. Both of these are good for your business.
BPT 2 -- If you are going to implement BPT 1, don’t fail to create a separate segment for subscribers that don’t engage. You don’t want to be sending cut-off warning emails to your regular customers.
A few points to understand the problem:
- If you’ve noticed a drop in your email engagement, click-throughs, and sales via emails, your emails are probably being marked as spam by your subscribers’ email providers (EPs), and one major cause of this is a bloated list.
- A list that is “Too big” or “bloated” will mean different things for different brands. It’s based on the proportion of email subscribers who are interested in what you’re selling versus those who are not.
- To be clear, a 50k-sized list might be bloated, while another business’ list of 1 million subs might not be, and vice versa. So bloat is about how clean your list is and not about sheer numbers.
- Email providers punish bloat with low visibility. This could mean your emails go to “promotions/newsletter tabs” or are marked as Spam. The bigger the proportion of uninterested to interested, the greater the danger of being punished by the EPs.
- Skilled email marketers implement tactics to ensure that emails aren’t marked as commercial and thus sent to promotions or newsletter tabs. But if they are, it’s not the end of the world. It’s truncated visibility, but it’s still safe.
- However, you don’t want your emails to be marked as Spam in your subscribers’ inbox. This could be immediate (for new leads) or could happen after some months in the “promotions” tab without engagement.
- Once EPs begin to limit the visibility of your emails, it will also affect new leads that you pull in. This could mean that even after you spend money on ads to attract quality leads, the EPs will treat them as bloat due to accumulated poor domain reputation.
- When EPs treat your new leads as bloat, it means two things for you:
- The money spent to acquire the new lead or customer goes down the drain.
- All that LTV talk and opportunities for selling to them are out the window. If they won’t see your emails, how can they ever buy from you?
Keep your list clean. This means you should remove every subscriber who is not interested in your products or offers. This is an active responsibility as long as you're sending emails and growing your list.
If a lead has not engaged your email in the last 3-6 months (I recommend 3 months if you send multiple weekly emails), they need to go.
(I also like to test them by segmenting those accounts that don’t click, promoting a low priced or free offer and cleaning out those who still don’t click through.)
Why?
Email engagement is how you gauge interest in your stuff. And the lack of it over an extended period is a trusted way to tell who’s interested in your stuff and who’s not.
It’s also what their EPs look at before limiting your visibility.
I once tested a new lead magnet on a tiny ad budget. We pulled in around 300 leads that day, but only 50 of them confirmed their subscription. Upon investigation, we discovered that most of our emails were marked as spam by email providers.
We had to pause the ad to fix the problem, and then manually copied and emailed the rest directly to check their spam and confirm their subscription.
For some of you wondering why your emails don’t convert as well anymore, it’s probably because 130k subs from your 150k list size get your emails sent to promotion or spam by their EPs. This means that you’re effectively selling to only 20k people.
If we assume a CVR of 27% on your list, effective visibility to 20k subs will give you 5,400 sales. While after cleaning out the deadweights, you could be getting 27k sales from effective email delivery to 100k. Which do you prefer?
(If you haven’t already realized, if the EPs truncate your email deliverability, it could kill your business.)
Every new lead you get will fall into one of three categories:
Interested: Your ideal customer. They need your products or services, are open to them, and can afford to pay for them for as long as you want them to. (ALWAYS KEEP)
Passers-by: They signed up to buy one or a few products but will lose interest within months or a year. (KEEP AS LONG AS THEY ENGAGE. CUT WITHIN 6 MONTHS OF THEIR LAST ENGAGEMENT)
Uninterested: They signed up to get your freebie or buy your low-priced offer, but that’s all. These could also be bot accounts employed by your competitors to fill your list with bloat and kill your domain rep over time. (CUT WITHIN 3-6 MONTHS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT. ALSO EMPLOY DOUBLE OPT-IN AND EMAIL VERIFICATION AS PROTECTIVE MEASURES)
As you can see, the responsibility to keep your list clean is in your hands. If you don’t do it, there could be dire consequences for your biz.
So, that’s the end of this post. I’ll be in the comments if you have any questions. My DMs are open if you need professional help.
BONUS PRO TIP 1 -- While it’s best practice to regard subscribers who don’t engage anymore as though your emails are already marked as spam in their inbox, and to cut them off. Sometimes, these people might just be victims of the behaviors of others. So, what you can do is send them a series of emails (three is enough) to let them know that you will be removing their emails for lack of engagement on a set date unless they either reply to your email or click a link.
And then, on the final email to be sent at the cut-off date, you could leave instructions on how to get back on the list (since they probably did not see the email before that date – happens if your emails go to spam). Subscribers who are interested in your offers will follow through when they see it. Those who aren’t interested will ignore it. Both of these are good for your business.
BPT 2 -- If you are going to implement BPT 1, don’t fail to create a separate segment for subscribers that don’t engage. You don’t want to be sending cut-off warning emails to your regular customers.