You may think that your biggest problem will be all the money and time wasted on recipients that don’t exist. And while that is a massive issue, an even bigger one is that sending to invalid addresses hurts your email reputation.
In other words, when you send emails to fake and outdated addresses, email service providers assign you the reputation of a bad sender. That means that even when you get the right email addresses in the future, your emails will have a more challenging time landing in the inbox.
The solution? Cleaning your email list. Today, we’ll show you how to do that.
What does it mean to clean an email list?
Cleaning, validating or verifying an email list means removing all email addresses that can cause poor email deliverability. Primarily, it means taking an entire list of emails and removing:
- Outdated emails (those that no longer exist)
- Fake email addresses (that someone added just to sign up for a free trial, for example)
- Spam traps (addresses explicitly designed to catch spammers)
- Catch-all addresses (such as marketing@example.com)
- Duplicate emails (that accidentally got added to your list more than once)
- Disposable emails (accounts that are made just for signing up for a service)
When you clean an email list, a person or a tool goes through your entire list of emails and removes all the addresses that can cause a dip in delivered emails. The result is a list of real people that you can reach out to safely.
Why should I clean my email list?
All of the above may seem like a lot of work. However, if you rely on email marketing as a channel for making revenue, there are plenty of reasons why you should spend time and money verifying lists of emails.
Improved email deliverability
With a clean list of emails, your email deliverability rates tend to be higher. As real people receive your emails, more of your messages end up in the primary inbox as opposed to the spam folder or not being delivered at all.
Reduced bounce rates
Sending to legitimate email addresses significantly decreases your chances of hard and soft bounces. A high bounce rate can damage your email reputation in the long run, so verifying your list is an excellent way to solve two problems simultaneously.
Increased engagement
If you’re struggling with low open and click-through rates, the culprit could be a poorly managed email list. If it only contains clean, valid emails, your overall engagement metrics can be significantly higher. If all the people on the list receive your emails, more people will open and click through on them – it’s as simple as that.
Cost efficiency
Email marketing costs can go up to $1,000 per month for even small businesses with moderately-sized lists. Many email marketing tool vendors charge you based on the size of your list and the volume of emails you send out.
The invalid addresses on your lists are dead weight and cost you money with every campaign that goes out.
Improved sender reputation
Internet service providers keep scorecards of every domain worldwide and the campaigns they send out. Based on the quality of your emails, metrics such as bounce rates and open rates, engagement, and more, ISPs assign you a value called sender reputation.
With a bad reputation, even outstanding campaigns will have a hard time breaking through to the primary inbox. Cleaning up your lists is a significant step towards improving your reputation as a sender.
Compliance with regulations
Legislation such as GDPR requires businesses to have up-to-date databases on their email recipients. This can be very difficult if you manage enormous email lists.
Email validation helps with the bulk of this workload. Tools such as Bouncer can be set up to automatically run through a list at a certain time frame, making light work of GDPR compliance.
Improved analytics
If you can’t reach a portion of your subscribers because their addresses are invalid, this skews your analytics for all your email campaigns. In other words, if all your emails were delivered, your click-through and open rates would be higher.
With a clean list, you can rely on your analytics for more accurate results.
Improved customer experience
Clean lists ensure that all your email marketing efforts focus on people who receive and open your messages. Your segmentation will be improved, the content will speak to the recipient, you’ll send more timely messages, and as a result, the customer experience will be vastly improved.
How to clean your email list: two main ways
If you want a pristine email list, there are two main ways you can go about it: manually or using email verification tools.
We’ll present both to you so you can determine which one is the best in terms of time and money invested, as well as meeting the needs of your business.
Manually cleaning an email list
When you get a message that an email has bounced back because the address no longer exists, you can manually remove this address from your list. This is not the only manual activity you can undertake to clean up a list without paying any money for validation tools.
This is what the process looks like if you want to clean a list by hand.
#1 Review your engagement metrics
Go to the dashboard of your email marketing tool and take a look at your engagement metrics for different lists. Open rates, click-through rates, and others to find out who is no longer interacting with your emails.
You can send a re-engagement campaign to these recipients and ask them if they still want to be on your lists. If not, you can remove them. Or you can simply remove them without asking if you suspect there are no real people behind the addresses.
Cost: free
Effort: significant, and the bigger your list is, the more complicated it gets
#2 Remove duplicates
Run through your list and manually check for duplicate emails. While these are not as bad as outdated or fake addresses, having doubles will result in one recipient receiving multiple emails from you in each campaign. This can be seen as intrusive, and you risk being flagged as spam.
To remove duplicates manually, review the list and check if you spot any repeated emails. Using a simple CTRL+F (or CMD+F) can be of help here.
Cost: free
Effort: moderate to significant, depending on the size of your list
#3 Send re-engagement campaigns
In these campaigns, you target a segment of your lists that are not unsubscribed and ask these recipients if they still want to receive emails from you. Typically, that is the entire email content: asking if they still want to be on the list.
After the replies, you can manually remove each recipient that does not click on a link or reply to an email.
Cost: the cost of your email marketing tool
Effort: low since you can find information on unengaged subscribers fairly easily
#4 Ask for contact updates
Send out a manual campaign and ask your subscribers to update their contact data. This can be a new email (since they’re not using their old one), a change in their job title, the company they’re working for, or something else.
Cost: the cost of your email marketing tool
Effort: low
Using list cleaning (email verification) tools
If efficiency and speed are paramount, using a list-cleaning tool is the better option. But the benefits go far beyond that: these tools are also more accurate, and compared to manual validation, you can clean a wider variety of addresses.
Let’s look at a few ways you can automate this process.
01 Use an email validation tool such as Bouncer
Simply upload a list of email addresses (or connect your email marketing tool) to Bouncer and let the tool do its magic. You’ll get immediate feedback and a rundown of your addresses within moments.
You’ll learn which emails are outdated and inactive, which are duplicates, disposable, spam traps, catch-all addresses, and more. You can then simply remove all of these addresses from your list and get an immediate boost in your engagement and sender reputation.
Cost: as low as $8 for 1,000 addresses
Effort: minimal
02 Create bounce management rules
In your email marketing tool, set up a rule for hard bounces. If a hard bounce happens, the tool can automatically delete these addresses from your lists, preventing you from making the same error in the future.
Similar rules can be set up for soft bounces, depending on the bounce code.
Cost: the cost of your email marketing tool
Effort: minimal
03 Set up automated re-engagement campaigns
Depending on the email marketing app you use, you can create rule-based campaigns for old subscriber lists.
For example, create a rule where every address that has not opened an email in more than six months is sent a re-engagement message, asking to confirm their subscription. If they don’t open the email, they’re off the list.
Cost: the cost of your email marketing tool
Effort: minimal
04 Unsubscribe automation
Create rules for when someone should be unsubscribed from your list. For example, after a certain period of no activity, after they don’t click through on any emails for 3 months, or anything else that is relevant to your campaigns.
Cost: the cost of your email marketing tool
Effort: minimal
Manual vs. automated cleaning: which one is better?
Cleaning emails manually requires more time, but it’s also completely free. If you’re just starting with building a list, it’s probably the better choice for your business.
Manual cleaning can take hours every week or month if you have an established email list with hundreds or thousands of addresses. Even more importantly, manual cleaning won’t help you spot spam traps, catch-all addresses, disposable emails, and similar risky addresses.
| Aspect | Manual list cleaning | Automated list cleaning |
| Efficiency | Time-consuming | Very fast and efficient – you can clean thousands of emails per minute |
| Accuracy | Prone to human error | Very high, up to 99.5% with Bouncer |
| Cost | Free | As low as $8 for 1,000 emails |
| Customization | Customizable based on your individual needs | Limited by the capabilities of software |
| Scalability | Difficult to scale as there is a lot of manual work involved | Easy to scale – tools such as Bouncer handle 1,000 emails as easily as 100,000 |
| Engagement management | Requires manual analysis and action | Can be fully automated |
| Real-time updates | Not possible unless you scan each email that comes in | Possible with integrations and APIs |
| Duplicate removal | Requires manual search | Fully automated |
| Bounce management | Requires manual monitoring and removal | Fully automated |
| Regulatory compliance | Requires manual checks | Fully automated |
| Ease of use | Requires knowledge and experience in list management | Easy to set up and use |
Email cleaning tools are the better option for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Cost is not a limiting factor because you can clean lists for as low as a cup of coffee.
Clean up your lists today with Bouncer
Given how affordable and effective list cleaning tools are, no one should be cleaning their subscriber lists manually. If your business depends on emails to drive new revenue, you should not leave something as important as list quality up to the risk of human error.
At Bouncer, we can help you validate thousands of emails per minute at super low costs, whether you validate once or get a monthly subscription.
Give Bouncer a try today and validate your first 100 emails for free!
