How much is your customer data worth to you?
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lexis clicks
doing online marketing By lexis clicks
Published on 3/11/11
No email address is permanent. People change jobs, job titles, switch Internet providers, or abandon their accounts in an attempt to avoid spam.
How much is your customer data worth to you?
No email address is permanent. People change jobs, job titles, switch Internet providers, or abandon their accounts in an attempt to avoid spam. Companies need to stay ahead of these changes by conducting regular data cleansing of their email lists to ensure a low rate of bounce backs and a high rate of email deliverability.
The quality of data in your email marketing database can make a big difference to the return on investment (ROI) you get from your sales and marketing campaigns. Without regular cleansing you’ll have a large database of customer email addresses, but many of those emails will be duplicates, invalid, dead, or bogus, and your bounce-rate will be high. By maximising your email deliverability and keeping a clean list you’ll improve your sender reputation and avoid being blacklisted by major ISPs.
There’s a real business case for investing in data cleansing when you consider the following example. If you cleanse a data base with 50,000 names in it, by improving the quality of that data by 10% you’ll expose your offer to 5,000 additional prospects. With a 5% conversion rate, that translates to 250 more purchases (or downloads, or visits to your site, or whatever other activity you’re promoting).
Best practice tips Remove duplicates and process incorrect addresses. Your list will attract new subscribers from a variety of sources including:
• Lead forms on your website • List mergers with other departments from within your company • Forwards from your past email campaigns • Bought in data • Direct mail and catalogues • Exhibitions and surveys Duplicate email addresses should be automatically removed and emails with incorrect syntax flagged. Rather than removing incorrect email addresses permanently, store them as inactive records, this will allow marketers to access and correct them individually in future customer support inquires.
1. Handle unsubscribe requests as soon as they’re received. In an organisation with multiple departments, ensure these requests are implemented company-wide. 2. Process soft and hard bounces as they happen. Repeated soft bounces should be treated as hard bounces and removed from your active lists. Before removing them, allow three consecutive soft bounces—or even less if you want to play on the safe side. Hard bounces should be removed as they happen. Ignoring hard bounces is a quick way to destroy your reputation. You can contact the bounced recipient for an updated email address via phone. 3. Handle email replies and complaints individually. Regardless of how clear your unsubscribe instructions are, or information on where to contact you is, your recipients will push the 'Reply' button to ask you general questions, make unsubscribe requests that cannot be captured automatically, or request customer support for completely unrelated reasons. 4. Consider sending out a questionnaire to your subscriber list, asking them to update their details and to let you know what they’d like to receive information on. You can always incentivise the survey in order to increase response rates. This way you’ll have an opted in subscriber list who are really engaged with your company.
Most of the above best practices should be handled by a reputable email provider. If you’re processing duplicates, incomplete addresses or bounce errors manually, you’re already falling behind and missing out on those additional sales opportunities. If you’d like help with your email marketing, or you’d just like to have a chat to see what we can do for you, contact LexisClick Online Marketing at www.lexisclick.com/email or call us on 01202 788333.
LexisClick is a digital marketing company based in Bournemouth, specialising in helping ambitious businesses achieve their objectives, through effective online marketing. We specialise in web design, SEO services and advertising. For further information contact us on 01202 788333 or visit www.lexisclick.com.
The quality of data in your email marketing database can make a big difference to the return on investment (ROI) you get from your sales and marketing campaigns. Without regular cleansing you’ll have a large database of customer email addresses, but many of those emails will be duplicates, invalid, dead, or bogus, and your bounce-rate will be high. By maximising your email deliverability and keeping a clean list you’ll improve your sender reputation and avoid being blacklisted by major ISPs.
There’s a real business case for investing in data cleansing when you consider the following example. If you cleanse a data base with 50,000 names in it, by improving the quality of that data by 10% you’ll expose your offer to 5,000 additional prospects. With a 5% conversion rate, that translates to 250 more purchases (or downloads, or visits to your site, or whatever other activity you’re promoting).
Best practice tips Remove duplicates and process incorrect addresses. Your list will attract new subscribers from a variety of sources including:
• Lead forms on your website • List mergers with other departments from within your company • Forwards from your past email campaigns • Bought in data • Direct mail and catalogues • Exhibitions and surveys Duplicate email addresses should be automatically removed and emails with incorrect syntax flagged. Rather than removing incorrect email addresses permanently, store them as inactive records, this will allow marketers to access and correct them individually in future customer support inquires.
1. Handle unsubscribe requests as soon as they’re received. In an organisation with multiple departments, ensure these requests are implemented company-wide. 2. Process soft and hard bounces as they happen. Repeated soft bounces should be treated as hard bounces and removed from your active lists. Before removing them, allow three consecutive soft bounces—or even less if you want to play on the safe side. Hard bounces should be removed as they happen. Ignoring hard bounces is a quick way to destroy your reputation. You can contact the bounced recipient for an updated email address via phone. 3. Handle email replies and complaints individually. Regardless of how clear your unsubscribe instructions are, or information on where to contact you is, your recipients will push the 'Reply' button to ask you general questions, make unsubscribe requests that cannot be captured automatically, or request customer support for completely unrelated reasons. 4. Consider sending out a questionnaire to your subscriber list, asking them to update their details and to let you know what they’d like to receive information on. You can always incentivise the survey in order to increase response rates. This way you’ll have an opted in subscriber list who are really engaged with your company.
Most of the above best practices should be handled by a reputable email provider. If you’re processing duplicates, incomplete addresses or bounce errors manually, you’re already falling behind and missing out on those additional sales opportunities. If you’d like help with your email marketing, or you’d just like to have a chat to see what we can do for you, contact LexisClick Online Marketing at www.lexisclick.com/email or call us on 01202 788333.
LexisClick is a digital marketing company based in Bournemouth, specialising in helping ambitious businesses achieve their objectives, through effective online marketing. We specialise in web design, SEO services and advertising. For further information contact us on 01202 788333 or visit www.lexisclick.com.