Don’t let the dry term fool you: at its heart, email list management is all about people. Part craft and part science, it requires a nuanced understanding of people’s wants and needs, which in turn inform how they connect with your content. Making sure people have the information they need and want builds communities and nurtures relationships.
So it’s no surprise then, that effective list management is crucial for communications teams at organizations like universities and municipalities—where stakeholders’ interests and demographics are extremely diverse. Done right, email list management can boost your open rates, reduce the risk of your emails landing in spam, and drive more engagement. In other words: it can nurture relationships and build communities. Get it wrong though, and you could see your emails ignored, or worse, marked as spam.
In this blog, we’ll take a detailed look at 7 email list management best practices to keep your email list healthy, and your subscribers happy and engaged with the content that is just right for them. What’s inside:
Comprehensive Email List Management Checklist
- What is Email List Management?
- Building and Growing Your Email List
- Maintaining List Hygiene
- Enhancing Subscriber Engagement
- Safety First! Compliance and Data Protection
- Leveraging Analytics and Reporting
- Benefits of Great List Management
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1. What is Email List Management?
Email list management describes the processes and strategy involved in managing your contacts and subscribers. It involves tagging and segmentation to curate your lists, as well as list cleaning to remove duplicate and invalid addresses, and to segment unsubscribed contacts so they don’t receive optional content. Keeping clean, well-tagged and segmented lists helps you keep contacts engaged by ensuring you send the right content to people who are happy to receive it.
TIP: Still paying for unsubscribed contacts with Mailchimp? At Envoke, our fair-pricing policy means you don’t pay for unsubscribed contacts. Unlimited subscription lists are included with every billing plan. If your contact list size changes we don’t charge expensive overage fees.
2. Building and Growing Your Email List
Permission-Based Marketing and Communications
Communicators at universities, municipalities, and associations typically send informative and educational emails to invested stakeholders who are less likely to opt-out, but they must still be allowed to unsubscribe from optional communications. Permission-based marketing is an essential best practice. It’s also the law in many places. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires explicit consent before you send marketing emails. The American CAN-SPAM Act requires you to provide a clear way for recipients to opt out of your emails. And Canadian CASL legislation has similar requirements.
Using a double opt-in process — where subscribers confirm their email address after signing up—helps ensure you’re reaching people who genuinely want to hear from you. According to HubSpot, companies using double opt-in see an average open rate of 30.8%, compared to 22.6% for single opt-in lists.
Use Software with Mandatory Messaging Capabilities for Required Emails
For non-commercial applications where legislation or contractual obligations require you to send emails, even to people who have opted out of receiving email from you – choose a purpose-built product like Envoke. Too many communications professionals lose time hacking this process, cobbling together small unsubscribe lists to hand-craft small batches of mandatory emails. Envoke takes the guesswork away, giving you a well-tested tool to send emails from which subscribers cannot opt-out. This is an essential tool for organizations that can demonstrate a legal or contractual requirement to send mandatory information to their stakeholders.
Email List Management: Segmentation
One-size-fits-all eblasts are a thing of the past. Today, segmentation is key. According to Hubspot, Segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than unsegmented ones.
Post-secondary institutions might segment their lists based on undergraduate or graduate status, domestic and international students, full- and part-time. Envoke has further capabilities for internal tagging, which allows you to customize emails to very specific niches within broader segments. .
FACT: Envoke’s industry-leading tagging and list segmentation tools offer the best experience.
Data Collection Best Practices
When it comes to collecting subscriber data, safety is key and less is often more. Ask for only the information you need to personalize the experience without overwhelming your subscribers. A simple sign-up form asking for a name and email address is often sufficient. You can always gather more data later through surveys or preference centers.
3. Maintaining List Hygiene
Like most things, email lists naturally decay over time, due to unsubscribes, bounces, and other factors. Regularly cleaning your list helps you remove inactive subscribers, which can improve your open and click-through rates and is an email list management best practice.
Handling Bounces and Unsubscribes
Do you know the difference between soft and hard bounces? Soft bounces are temporary issues (like a full inbox), while hard bounces indicate a permanent problem (like an invalid email address). It’s important to remove hard bounces from your list immediately to maintain your sender reputation. Envoke does this for you automatically. Bounced emails are automatically excluded from future e-blasts as it’s best practice not to keep sending to known invalid emails. You don’t need to manually remove or exclude these contacts.
Also, make it easy for people to unsubscribe. Communicators know that offering a simple unsubscribe process can reduce spam complaints. According to a study by Return Path, spam complaints are one of the biggest factors that affect your email deliverability, so it’s worth making unsubscribing hassle-free. If you have contacts who need to receive essential emails, regardless of subscription status, talk to Envoke about our Mandatory Messaging feature.
FACT: More than a simple unsubscribe page, Envoke offers a fully customizable subscription management page where you can communicate to your contacts what type of messages they can expect to receive, show them other available content, and clearly identify mandatory content from which they cannot unsubscribe.
Managing Complaints and Spam Reports
Keep an eye on your complaint rates, too. Industry benchmarks suggest that a spam complaint rate above 0.1% is a red flag. To minimize complaints, ensure your emails are relevant to the recipients and identify who the email is from. Personalizing your emails can also reduce the chances they’ll be flagged as spam.
4. Enhancing Subscriber Engagement
Personalization and Email List Management
Personalization goes beyond just using a subscriber’s first name in the email. It involves delivering relevant, personalized content that will delight your contacts. According to Experian, personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates, but 70% of brands fail to use them properly. Use Envoke’s dynamic content blocks to show, or hide, entire blocks of content in emails depending on recipients’ interests. For example, you can send a general staff newsletter but include a block with event invitations, to be shown only to contacts who are interested in events.
Optimizing Send Frequency and Timing
Finding the sweet spot for how often to send emails is tricky. Too many, and you risk annoying your subscribers; too few, and they might forget about you. Surveys can help and subscription management pages can, too – if you provide the option for contacts to choose how often they want to hear from you.
Testing different send times can also have a big impact. Between 10 am and 1 pm is considered best practice, but the best time to send can vary based on your audience, so it’s important to test and optimize.
Re-Engagement Campaigns
It’s normal for some subscribers to become inactive over time. Re-engagement campaigns are a great way to win them back. According to HubSpot, re-engagement emails have an average open rate of 12%, which might not sound high, but it’s better than having those subscribers sitting dormant on your list. Offer something of value—like an invitation or exclusive content—to entice them to start engaging again.
5. Safety First: Compliance and Data Protection
Understanding Legal Requirements
Staying compliant with email marketing laws is crucial. Non-compliance can result in hefty fines. For example, under the GDPR, fines can reach up to €20 million or 4% of your global turnover, whichever is higher. The CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. also imposes penalties for violations, including up to $43,280 per email in some cases.
Make sure you’re familiar with the regulations that apply to your audience and always get explicit consent before adding someone to your email list. Envoke can help.
Managing Subscriber Data Securely
With data breaches on the rise, protecting your subscribers’ data is more important than ever. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, data breaches increased by 68% in 2021. Protect your subscribers with secure data, and compliant data storage, and have clear policies in place communicating how data is used and protected. Transparency is key—let your subscribers know what data you’re collecting and how you’ll use it.
TIP: Need Data in Canada? Envoke stores all data in Canada at Canadian data centres in compliance with common Canadian data security and privacy guidelines.
6. Leveraging Analytics and Reporting
Tracking Key Metrics
Monitoring key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates is essential to understanding how well your emails are performing. The open rate across industries averages out to 21.33%, with a click-through rate of 2.62%. If your rates are significantly lower, it might be time to reassess your strategy.
A/B Testing
A/B testing is one of the best ways to optimize your email campaigns. By testing different subject lines, content, and designs, you can see what resonates most with your audience. According to Litmus, A/B testing can increase your email conversion rates by a whopping 49%.
Iterate and Improve: Always
Email marketing is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. Regularly analyze your campaign performance and use the insights to make data-driven adjustments. Over time, these small tweaks can lead to significant improvements in your overall results.
7. Benefits of Great Email List Management
Managing your email list isn’t just a good habit—it’s a game-changing strategy that can set you apart from the competition and take your email marketing to the next level, boosting your ROI. Here’s why taking care of your email contacts can make a big difference:
- You’ll get to know your audience better, especially the segments that bring the most value to your business.
- Your data will be more accurate, allowing you to send personalized emails that increase revenue from your campaigns.
- Your emails are more likely to land in inboxes rather than spam folders, as engagement plays a big role in how spam filters work.
- You’ll keep your list healthy by removing inactive contacts, fake addresses, and spam traps.
- You’ll also save money since most email marketing platforms charge based on the number of contacts or emails sent.
Email list management is both an art and a science. By following these best practices—building a permission-based list, keeping it clean, engaging your subscribers, staying compliant with regulations, and continuously optimizing—a well-managed email list doesn’t just deliver better results; it creates a more engaged and loyal audience.
