Did You Know Suppressing Problematic Email Domains Elevates Your Company’s Open Rates?
In our last article, we introduced the concept of list hygiene as an essential practice for any business or organization that frequently sends out bulk emails as part of its marketing structure. At Admail, we understand that your time is valuable and that it’s essential for you to focus on strategies that see a return. What do you do if you have enacted list hygiene measures by sweeping out abandoned or unresponsive email addresses, but you still aren’t seeing the desired results — a better sender reputation, more list member engagement, and higher open rates?
In this third installment in our series on how Admail empowers organizations to manage their data efficiently, we’ll focus on methods for increasing list member activity in between cleanses — and ways to maintain high open rates by only sending content to responsive addresses and domains.
Revisiting list hygiene
Clearing out old email addresses, fake addresses, and those that have redirected your mail to spam is an essential practice for your business’ list management strategy. Email hygiene leads to improved customer relations and better click-through and open rates — proving that shorter email lists with a large number of active participants are more valuable than long, unmonitored ones.
One of the most frequent errors that well-meaning businesses make is to enact list hygiene strategies in one large, sweeping motion and expect an immediate return without consistent upkeep. To maintain list health and vibrancy, pay consistent attention to cleansing your database from unengaged list members in order to provide the best possible services to the members who prove their interest in your business. If that seems like a big ask, have no fear — the practice of list hygiene consistency is made possible and simple with the right software integrations.
Domain suppression: an essential list hygiene tool
Admail’s domain suppression function is a simple software addition with wide-reaching implications for your email hygiene strategy.
What are “trash domains?”
The story is unfortunate but not unfamiliar: a prospect wants to engage with your services but has become jaded from years of being targeted by uninspired email campaigns that clog their inbox with repetitive, unsolicited advertising. Even if your marketing is spotless, those without preexisting contact with your brand could easily mistake your business for another plague to their inboxes.
One option these prospects have to avoid the problem altogether is to use a fake, “trash” address when signing up for your mailing list. This allows them to interact with everything your brand has to offer — without ever hearing from you again on their functional email addresses.
Using Smartgroups for effective domain suppression
The domains that host these trash email addresses pose a serious threat to your sender reputation: increased hard bounces and a resulting unlikelihood that legitimate list members will see your emails. Admail users are equipped with the tools needed to mitigate the effects of trash domains. The Smartgroups feature allows list owners to target specific subcategories and deliver mail based on any number of specified features — including domain type. By finding and eliminating addresses on this defined list, your business can improve its email hygiene effectiveness by leaps and bounds.
Re-engage list members with group segmentation
Once an effective domain suppression campaign has been set in place, Smartgroups can be further implemented to increase the number of engaged list members:
- Increase open rates: By focusing emails exclusively on active list members, your business increases the likelihood of especially interested customers finding and investing in your products and services. When coupled with purges of unengaged addresses, Smartgroups effectively increase open rates over time.
- Set up future campaigns: Segmenting your audience is also an effective measure in the planning phase of developing email marketing campaigns. Concrete evidence in the form of open and click-through rates reveals which characteristics define your most engaged list members and allow your business to establish interest groups according to those factors — demographic information, global location, how they heard about your business, and more.
- Target non-responders: Use Smartgroups to offer unengaged list members a final opportunity to re-engage with your campaigns before the bi-annual list hygiene cleanse. By targeting non-responders with new offers, you create fresh customer acquisition opportunities and decrease the number of addresses that need to be suppressed.
Intelligent list management for email strategy success
Admail has every technological capability and support structure your business could need to create your most successful email strategies yet. Our Smartgroups feature is just one essential piece of our wider List Builder toolkit, which gives your team the ability to organically collect new customer information and organize it in customizable databases for mass delivery and targeting. And we don’t stop there — our exemplary customer support services ensure your team never has a question unanswered as you integrate and interact with Admail software. Your business structure and abilities have gotten you far, and we would love to become a partner in your continued growth and success.
Interested in learning more about how to suppress problematic email domains? Sign up for a 30-day free trial to experience Admail for your organization. In our next article, we’ll explain how to move beyond simply sending bulk emails by creating a specific, strategic email marketing campaign.