List-collection methods and best practice

Teresa Smith 0:00
Hello, I'm Teresa from SMTP2GO. Today, if you're not familiar with SMTP2GO then just to quickly went over what we do, and why I'm speaking at Inbox Expo today. So we're a New Zealand based company, which is pretty cool. But I'm actually based over in Madrid in Spain, and we provide an outbound email service, you might use a service like ours to remove ISP limits, if you're sending in high volume, for example, and to improve deliverability. Or perhaps you have a certain device that needs a service like ours, in order to send emails to begin with. So I've been working for SMTP2GO for almost five years now. And throughout my time with the company, I've seen marketers make the same mistakes again and again, when it comes to their mailing lists. And if you didn't already know, your mailing list actually plays a very important role when it comes to inbox placement. So I thought this was a pretty important topic to cover today's event. So before I go into what you should do, I wanted to went over what not to do, and some of the things that you are going to run into along the way. So I have three rules, super simple. From this day forward, I don't want you to do any of these three things. This is our pledge. Number one, to never purchase a mailing list. Number two, to never, ever create a list yourself by taking email addresses from websites. And this includes LinkedIn, it's not opt in. Number three, to never neglect cleaning your list, you got to. So I generally look like this when somebody comes to me with a purchase mailing list. Sending to purchase mailing list is probably one of the worst things that you can do. When it comes to sender reputation. Not only engagement rates be on the floor, actually illegal and you aren't 100% going to run into one of the finest tools ever created for catching spam spam trap. But what is a spam trap? Let me tell you a story. There was a girl me who created an email address when she was 16. She had that email address for a while and it signed up to many newsletters, horoscope updates, discounts form clothing stores, eventually job websites, and so on. Until one day she was completely locked out. She'd been travelling for over a year, rarely getting the chance to sit at a computer, let alone check her emails. When she eventually returned home, she had of course, forgotten her password. Unfortunately for her, she was unable to request a password reset on her new device due to changing her telephone number during this time. Sound familiar? She didn't stress too much she just created a new email address is about time for a more professional one anyway, seeing as she was now 22. But that was not the end of her previous email address. Oh no, that address is now what we call a soundtrack. So what happens is, after about 18 months of inactivity, and I SP will take ownership of that address, and it will become a soundtrack. From then on. If an email is sent to the address, it will trigger a trap. And it's either a clear sign of a purchase list or a very dirty list. And when I say dirty if you think about how many emails I generally signed up to receive, if you're still sending me emails after 18 months of inactivity, you've clearly not cleaned your mailing lists in a very long time. But we'll get into that a bit later on. So the next thing you're going to run into are honey pots. So the honeypot may actually be a little stickier than a thumb job. It's a similar concept in terms of it was a once existing email address which is no longer in use. But they don't just sit there waiting for you to send them an email. Now,

they are strategically placed on websites. And within code by ISP is an anti spam entities with the sole purpose of catching a spammer who is creating a list which they plan to sell on, by using scraper software, which scrape email addresses automatically from the internet. And this is otherwise known as harvesting. Even one or two hits of either a spam trap, or a honeypot is going to cause crippling damage to your domains reputation. And it's really, really hard to come back from that I can assure you. So the next time you see that offer to buy a list that has been strategically put together to only contain your target market. Just have a quick thing about how that list has been compiled. One thing that you do know for sure, they have not signed up to receive emails from you. And that really should be enough to see your way. So the next thing that you are going to run into are malformed email addresses. So this is the type of trap that even the most legitimate marketer is going to fall into. As you've probably guessed, a malformed email address is of course, a simple and in most cases innocent typo made on signup. As you can see here, I have missed the number two from the domain. This is where double opt in comes in to save the day. By using a double opt in method, what happens is the verification email you then send to me to complete the signup warbands and my email address will not be added to your list. This is ideal as this then avoids you sending 1234 more emails to me before you get a chance to check your reports as you've been super super busy at work that week to realise they have all failed. Now some marketers may tell you that the double opt in step is a step that can be removed from the signup funnel to ensure the funnel is as short as possible. Now don't get me wrong. The signup funnel just need to be as short as possible. And I'll be going into that later on. But the double opt in step is not the step that you're going to want to be removing. If you think about it, if you are having multiple signups each and every day, if you send multiple emails to multiple malformed email addresses, it's only going to raise red flags with isbs. And they may start fielding your emails into the spam folder for neglecting your list. And it really is just an unnecessary shame. So to avoid spam traps honeypots A malformed email addresses you're going to want to generally build your list. And more importantly, you're going to want to keep it clean. But how can we go about doing this. So I'm going to go through some genuine quality list collection methods with you, you can at least start off with number one. Ensure that the signup link has been added to each and every page of your website. Whether it's slap bang in the middle, whether it pops up on the side, whether it's in the footer, or wherever it may be, just make sure it's there. Don't make your customers search for it. Number two, ensure your signup funnel is at its bare minimum I would suggest collecting the name email address including the opt in tick box capture. So I mentioning capture here as this is going to protect you from spam bots. I haven't got time to go into spam bots right now but believe me, you're gonna want to make sure that you are protected. And lastly, the double opt in verification step for some marketers may be screaming at me right now thinking but what about demographics and psychographics? How am I going to segment my list and they are right it's super important to segment my segment your list. But your sign up funnel is not the place that you need to collect those details. You need to get them at a later date. If anything, you should be collecting the IP address automatically anyway on sign up, which will at least tell you that location. So the next great thing you are going to want to do is to think of a common problem that your users may have and offer to fix it for free. And by free I mean in return for an email address and this is what we call a lead generator,

not a free plan, or demostrar, or anything like that this is not what we're talking about here. In fact, it's not your product at all. It just needs to relate in some way. So to give you an example SMTP2GO, I could create an E book, an E book on deliverability. It will contain both mine and SMTP2GO top secrets aren't reaching the inbox. In order to gain access, you're going to need to give me your email address. And while I'm at it, I'm going to try to get you to sign up to my mailing list. We will get signups. I mean, why wouldn't you, you've just fixed an issue that they were having for free, people are going to want to hear from you again. So to give you a few more examples of the types of things that you can do, I have seen social media scheduling tools offer lead generators, such as a social media proposal, template, content, talent, calendar, template, and so on. So once you've decided what your scheme to be, and you have it ready, bearing in mind that you may need to test a few to see which ones generate more leads, you're going to want to promote the lead gen rotor as if it were a product across your social media channels on a regular basis. And that's just going to maximise signups for you. Okay, so on to the important stuff. Once your list has started to grow, and it will, you're going to want to keep on top of list hiding, it really is the only way to keep isbs and incoming mail servers on your side. So it's actually quite normal for your mailing list to decrease by 20 to 30% each year. I know, it sounds an awful lot, and it is a lot. And that's why this part of the presentation is super, super important. So of course there are many paid for services out there that you can use to do this for you. And I would actually recommend using one of those once your list starts to get pretty big. If you're not quite there yet, I'm going to share some tips with you that can help you keep on top of list hygiene. So number one, probably the most obvious one, but people do not do this, remove unsubscribes spam complaints, and hard bounce recipients immediately from your list. If you're using a service such as SMTP2GO, what we actually do is once one of those events occurred, we'll add the recipients dress to a suppressions list within the users account. This thing gives our users more time to check their reports, remove those recipients from their mailing list, or perhaps even address the issue at hand. In the case of a hard bounce, for example, they might not be permanent, you may be able to salvage up. So if you don't have a suppression feature in place, keep on top of your delivery reports. And we knew these recipients immediately from your mailing list. If you send multiple emails to either unsubscribes and spam complaints in particular, you are going to be penalised for it for sure. So the next thing that you're going to want to do is to monitor engagement. So engagement can actually work toward or against your sender reputation. And it's actually very normal for your engagement rates to drop as as you go along. Do not worry about it. What you do need to worry about is keeping on top of it. If an ISP or an ESP email service provider notices that a large portion of the overall amount of emails that you send, remain unopened or even worse deleted on arrival, they may start to see your emails as unsolicited and could start filtering into spam folder. Which then may mean that those that are still engaging with your emails may start to see your emails in the spam folder as well. So it is actually better to have a smaller and more engaged list. So before you remove inactive subscribers, you're going to want to send a reengagement email to see if you can salvage a few. So this email needs to be straight to the point let them know that you've noticed they are not responding to your emails or interacting at all, and offer an unsubscribe make it big, do not beat around the bush at this point. Alongside that unsubscribe, you're going to want to include some sort of special offer to entice them and see which one they go for.

Another great thing that you're going to want to do is to offer a downgrade to their subscription. And what I mean by that is, perhaps they don't want to unsubscribe, perhaps you're just sending them too many emails, and they want to hear less from you. Or perhaps they only want to hear about certain things, such as discounts and offers, I mean, I know which one I am ticking. So once you have sent your reengagement email, afterwards, you need to remove anybody that unsubscribed and more importantly, remove those that continue to ignore your requests. I know it's heartbreaking, but when you think about it, each and every email that you send costs money, therefore, those recipients are not only going against your engagement rates, and send a reputation. They are costing you money each and every time it's literally throwing money down the drain, just get rid of them. Lastly, back to my BIM. So this is if you decided not to, or perhaps couldn't use a double opt in method, you are going to want to watch out for those obvious malformed email addresses. So many of them you won't know like, how could you possibly know you'll have absolutely no idea. But some of them you will, such as somebody has left the URL at the end of Gmail or hotmail or similar. So do watch out for those. Secondly, and I'd like to remind you that this is when your list is still relatively small, it's a good idea to have a look through auto responses. So some of those auto replies may actually indicate that the email address is no longer in use, such as the person no longer works for the company anymore. Or perhaps then they themselves have created a second email address, and are now redirecting all emails to that inbox. You never know. These email addresses may one day become a spam trap. And if anything, they are just adding to the number of people that are not engaging with your emails. Get rid of them. So just to go over what I have been talking about today, in order to avoid spam traps, and honeypots, stay away from purchased mailing lists, and do not create a list yourself by taking email addresses from websites. Again, I'm going to mention that this includes LinkedIn, people do not like it. These traps are designed to catch spammers. So even one or two emails to either all is going to cause damage to your sender reputation. Use a double opt in method where possible, because this is going to reduce the number of malformed email addresses that end up on your list. It does actually happen more than you perhaps would think. Keep on top of list hygiene, removing unsubscribed spam complaints, high bounce recipients when they occur and keeping on top of inactive subscribers, removing them each six to one year maximum. Of course, ensure that you follow best practices when it comes to building your list, such as lead generators, ensuring that the signup form is visible on each page of your website. Ensure that they don't miss it. Number three, to ensure that the signup funnel is as short as possible so that you don't get drop offs. And I'd say that is really about it. Although purchasing a list or not using best practices to create your list is easier and quicker. But I assure you there's going to be one of the worst thing that you do when it comes to sender reputation. Thank you