You’re putting in all the effort to send emails, but they’re not even getting opened. Sounds familiar? Many email marketers face this challenge.
One potential reason for this could be that the email addresses you’re targeting either don’t exist or belong to recipients who are simply not interested in your content. This is why maintaining a clean email list is crucial to ensure your emails not only get delivered but also have a chance of being opened.
In this guide, we will explore some ways to clean your email list and boost your delivery, deliverability and engagement rates.
Why should you have a clean email list?
You should have a clean email list and send emails to only those who can receive it. Cleaning your email list provides you with the following:
Reduced bounce rates and spam complaints
Improved sender reputation
Improved engagement rates and campaign performance
Signs you should clean your email list
A clean email list helps you boost your engagement rates and deliverability rates. But how do you know that your email list needs cleaning? Here are some signs that tell you to clean your email list:
1. Your open rates are dipping
If you're seeing a dip in your open rates, it could be happening for a few different reasons. It might be that your emails aren’t reaching your recipients' inboxes, or it could be that your emails and subject lines aren’t resonating with your subscribers or are no longer relevant to them.
2. Your email bounce rate is thriving
Bounce rate is another metric that you should check regularly. If it seems like it is rising, it's a sign you must clean your email list. Hard bounces are a red flag that you should be noticing as it means that your list includes invalid or outdated email addresses. It can even affect your sender reputation if you keep sending emails to these invalid email addresses.
3. You get a lot of spam complaints
When recipients mark your emails as spam, it indicates they don’t find your content relevant or don’t recognize your brand. High spam complaint rates can damage your sender reputation, making it harder for your emails to reach inboxes in the future.
This often happens when your list contains outdated contacts, uninterested subscribers, or addresses collected without proper consent. Removing such contacts ensures that your emails only go to people genuinely interested in hearing from you, improving deliverability and engagement.
How to maintain email hygiene
Maintaining a clean email list is essential for reducing unsubscribes, improving deliverability rates, and minimizing spam complaints. A well-maintained list helps you build a healthy subscriber base and ensures your emails reach the right audience. Follow these best practices to keep your email list in top shape:
1. Identify and remove invalid and inactive subscribers
Inactive subscribers are people who haven't opened or clicked on any of your emails for a significant amount of time. The first step to email cleaning is identifying these subscribers. Additionally, you may have email addresses that were valid before but are not anymore. You may also have email addresses with typos. Additionally, there may be duplicate email addresses that might be wandering around in your email list for a long time.
So, how do you identify inactive email subscribers? The answer is simple: just segment your email list. Segmentating based on engagement will help you identify inactive and invalid email addresses that have stopped interacting with your emails. After identifying, you can filter out and remove these email subscribers to get a clean email list.
2. Do list cleaning regularly
Removing invalid email addresses once won't help much; you must perform email list cleaning every 6 months. You can choose the duration between each cleaning session as per your business and email list size.
3. Give importance to unsubscribe link
If you don't want to bother cleaning these invalid email addresses too often, consider keeping the unsubscribe link at the end of the email and one-click unsubscribe link in the email header.
This shows them that you respect your subscribers' preferences. If they don't want to receive your emails, they can easily opt-out with a single click. Failing to do so can make your recipients mark you as spam, which would , in turn, hurt your sender reputation and deliverability. It also violates email regulations.
If you do not offer the option to opt-out or unsubscribe, you can also offer them the option to define their preferences, which means they can choose how often they will receive emails from you. You can do this by giving them access to a preference centre. This will help you still keep your subscribers close and not lose them.
4. Use email verification tools
Email verification ensures that the recipient's mailbox is active and accepts emails. It also identifies different email address discrepancies and possible spam traps before it gets flagged by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or mailbox providers, which can cause severe damage to your reputation. You can use an email verification service to get a clean and healthy email list and include only valid email addresses. Some email verification tools you can use are ZeroBounce, NeverBounce and Mailgun.
6. Implement a sunset policy
Set up a sunset policy where recipients who haven’t engaged with or opened a certain number of emails are added to a suppression list, meaning no further emails will be sent to them. Then, launch a re-confirmation email campaign to give them a final chance to express interest in receiving emails from you. If the recipient still doesn’t respond, remove them from your list. This ensures that your email list remains focused on an engaged audience, improving deliverability and minimizing the risk of spam complaints.
7. Provide double opt-in
Double opt-in, also known as confirmed opt-in, is a two-step process to add new contacts to your email list after obtaining their permission through email verification. The first step occurs when the user submits their email address to subscribe to your list. The second step requires the user to confirm their subscription by clicking on a confirmation link that you send them in an email. This ensures that your subscribers genuinely want to receive your emails, increasing the likelihood that they will open them.
8. Check for bot subscribers and remove them
Bot subscribers can wreak havoc on your email list by artificially inflating subscriber counts, distorting engagement metrics, and potentially harming your sender reputation. These fake accounts often don’t engage with your emails, leading to lower open and click rates. In some cases, bots may even trigger spam traps, which can result in your emails being flagged or blocked by email service providers.
To identify bot subscribers, look for suspicious email addresses (e.g., random strings of characters), accounts with no engagement history, or sudden spikes in sign-ups from a single domain. Regularly monitor and remove these accounts to maintain a clean, healthy email list that supports accurate metrics and strong deliverability.
5 best email list cleaners
Working manually on cleaning your email list can be a very tedious task. For some help, you can use an email list cleaning service to make sure you are getting rid of invalid email addresses. Here are the best email cleaning tools to use:
1. Jitbit
Jitbit is an email list cleaning tool that helps you clean your mailing list from invalid emails, typos, duplicate emails, disposable email addresses, and non-existing domains. You just need to paste your email addresses (one per line) and you will get a clean email list.
The tool is free to use.
2. Concord
Concord is an email cleaner and email validation tool that cleans typos, disposable email blacklists, and duplicates, verifies DNS records, and does Regex validation to ensure they follow the standard email format.
This tool is free to use.
3. NeverBounce
NeverBounce is another email cleaning and email verification service for bulk and huge email lists. It also does real-time email validation and verification so that you always have a clean email list. This is the best email verification and cleaning service if you have a bulk email list and you are suffering heavily from a dirty email list.
NeverBounce has custom pricing that depends on the number of your email subscribers. You pay per email.
4. Proofy
Proofy is an email scrubbing and email verification service. It also checks domain health and helps you identify emails with a high risk of spam and non-deliverability. It cleans up duplicates, errors, typos, bounce emails, temporary emails, and much more. This email cleaning service is also suitable for people who have a bulk email list.
For the first 100 emails, you can use this tool for free. For up to 5,000 emails, it costs you $16. For 50,000 emails, it costs $99.
5. ZeroBounce
ZeroBounce is a powerful email verification and list-cleaning tool designed to handle both small and large email lists. It offers a range of features, including email validation, detection of invalid or temporary emails, removal of duplicates, and identification of email addresses associated with abuse or spam traps.
The service is well-suited for businesses that need high accuracy and detailed reporting to ensure optimal deliverability and engagement, as it provides a dashboard. ZeroBounce operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the number of email addresses processed, with options for custom plans tailored to specific needs.
Final takeaway
A clean email list can significantly improve your email deliverability, sender reputation, and engagement rates. To maintain a clean list, follow best practices such as removing invalid and inactive email addresses, using double opt-in, and utilizing email verification and cleaning services.
You can also use email cleaning services like NeverBounce, Constant Contact, Jitbit, and Concord to easily clean invalid email addresses.
You can identify when your email list needs cleaning by checking the factors we've discussed. Once identified, follow the best practices outlined in this article to ensure your list is clean and remains clean.
