I just deleted a little over 8,000 subscribers to just one of my email lists.
Why?
Because according to my Aweber stats, they hadn’t opened up an email from me in the last two years.
To me, it became pointless to have these subscribers on my list if they were not opening my emails anymore.
I have a aggressive goal of trying to get a 20% open rate on the emails I send out and if I can’t hit that number, I start looking to clean up that list by removing dead emails.
In fact, I am getting ready to delete another 5,000 subscribers who have not opened up an email from for a long time.
I don’t need to rub my ego by having a massive email list because it is pointless if people are not reading my emails.
There are generally three (3) key metrics that impact your email marketing campaigns.
1. The “From” field
2. The “Subject Line”
3. The “Body” copy
The name in the “from” field will dictate whether a reader will see your email of value or importance.
The “subject line” will dictate your open rate.
The “body” copy will dictate whether the reader clicks through any links in your email.
If certain readers are not opening my emails over a two year period, there can only be two reasons.
1. My emails are going to their junk/spam folder and they are never seeing it.
2. As soon as they see my name in the from field, this disengage because I have lost that relationship.
The reality is, if you build email lists for marketing purposes, a subscriber (lead) has a certain life span.
It is “dog eat dog world” and with people suffering from information overload every single day, it is tough to stay on everyone’s radar.
I made a last ditch effort by emailing these subscribers and asking them to resubscribe.
The results from those 8,000+ emails sent:
64 opens
12 clicks
3 resubscribes
Enough said.
This validated my conclusion that this part of this list was indeed “dead.”
Not only will this increase the open rate on this list (which I am certain that sophisticated email providers like Gmail monitor), it will save me money at Aweber.
In fact, I will now make it a priority to clean up each of my lists at the beginning of each new year.
How often do you clean up your email lists?
Comment below.
