As an expert Mailchimp provider, e-mail list cleaning is our 1st task. Here are some quick, clean methods to detect potential dirty lists that we’ve learned:
Mega Lists
This is one of the biggest give signs…if a new business or a small business gives you a list that doesn’t make sense for the size of the business, usually something in the 5-6 figure. Be careful, be judgemental and be considerate. Talk to them and inquire how they obtained this list and the pitfalls of having an unauthorized list. Larger businesses of course will have larger emails, so gauge your client and their list accordingly.
Scraped E-mails
It’s astonishing how many businesses think they can just have someone internally go through websites and scrape their emails, or even worse use a email scraping software to build their lists. Look out for sales@Acompany.com,webmaster@abusinessname.com, and info@serviceprovider.com. Basically, look out for common starters like “sales@,” “support@” etc…
Easy Access
Spending considerable time and effort to build up something, you are naturally protective of it. Be cautious in too quickly and too easy situations, where you got the list from them without any due diligence on their part asking your privacy protocols.
Send out the BLAST
Every time we hear this word, we cringe. This means that this individual is from the era of Fax Blasts, remember those Free Hawaii trip blasts you use to get in the fax? Remind these customers it’s not a “blast” but an opportunity to build relationships instead of burning bridges. The second we hear “blast” come from our clients mouth, we give them one of the many books we’ve collected on the topic.
Be a Janitor, Clean their list!
There will be situations where customers will give you a list that is outdated by months, if not years. This is where you’ll have to pull out all the tricks to clean up the list. More often than not, less is more in email marketing. A large outdated, irrelevant list isn’t useful to anyone, it’ll spam the receiver and blacklist the sender. The best situation is to see their previous data, if they have any, of email campaigns. View their opens vs non-opens, then delete all the non-opens and focus with the only viewers and build from there.
