Should I clean up my list or keep the contacts?
Subscribers can be puzzling.
One day you’re high in the hog, pumped for getting a +30% open rate on your latest email. Other times you’re in disbelief, wondering why so many contacts seem to ignore your material.
And on these cycles unfold, until you find yourself contemplating the same dilemma so many email marketers frequently ponder:
“Should I clean up my list or keep the contacts?”
Chances are, you think you’re the only one who’s battled against this predicament. Far from it.
More than a handful of businesses we’ve worked with have been struggling with unengaged lists and were unsure what to do with those who just don’t open their emails anymore — re-engage them? Keep them? Get rid of them?
Truth be told, even if you had the best brand, the best products, the best marketing, the best email strategy, the best copy & the best deliverability in the entire world… you’d still have subscribers who just won’t engage with your emails.
Which is why today, with the aid of a detailed pros & cons table, I’m going to do my best to layout a completely unbiased argument for each.
Side A: Cleaning Up My List
Pros:
- Capitalizing on the ‘1000 True Fans’ principle
Have you heard of the famous ‘1,000 True Fans’ theory by Kevin Kelly?
If you’ve been in the online community for a while, you probably have.
To quote from the man himself, the theory explains:
“To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month.”
This applies to Email Marketing. A smaller, more engaged list can and often absolutely will outperform a larger, half-dead list. At a lower cost…
Business owners put a huge emphasis on how big their list is. Instead of making the most out of the contacts they already have. That’s often a vanity metric — your results should count.
Size matters, but what you can do with it does even more…
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge proponent of the bigger your email list, the better.
But at the end of the day, if you’re not emailing these contacts regularly, and going above and beyond to stay top of mind with your products & services, none of it would mean much.
You could have 100,000 contacts on your phone. But if you don’t keep in touch with them, or, at the very least, make sure to maintain a solid relationship with them, it won’t matter. Sooner or later, those people will forget you exist.
Therefore, by making a conscious effort to clean up your list every once in a while, you’d be placing a bigger value on relationships above email size. Putting you well on your way to surpass the 1,000 True Fans mark.
Which could very well be the life and blood of your eCommerce business.
- Removing all contacts who take up unnecessary space on your list
This one’s evident, and particularly advantageous for numerous reasons.
For starters, by doing this, you can get more ‘accurate’ analytics on your email marketing efforts. You wouldn’t spend so much time beating your head against the wall, trying to figure out why some contacts aren’t opening your emails.
You could send your campaigns & flows in peace, knowing immediately ‘who’s who’ on your list. Thus, you can adjust accordingly.
Additionally, by removing, and especially not blasting unengaged subscribers, your deliverability gets boosted. In Email Marketing, you should send relevant content to people who want to receive it — screw one of these two aspects up and you’ll get problems.
Because of your subscribers not opening your emails, Google and other internet providers read this lack of engagement as suspicious, and immediately filter your emails as ‘spammy’ or ‘not worth the primary inbox’. And you get sent to the promotions tab. Or worse, the spam.
Another perk you get from cleaning up your list, is saving money.
You’re paying rent for every subscriber on your list — kick out the ones who don’t want to live there, and ta-dah: Free real estate on your list. And since they’re not engaging with your brand in any way (yet alone buying your great products & services)… it might not be that bad of an idea.
Unless, of course, you’re completely okay with financing these contacts, in the hopes of turning them into trusted customers later on.
This leads us to the single biggest con we could find from following this route.
Cons:
- Missing out on potential sales & customers
In spite of boosting deliverability and saving money by getting rid of these contacts, it’s still undeniably that you could be missing out on more than a handful of customers.
In fact, it’s statistically proven a subscriber is more likely to become a customer the longer they’ve spent on your list — even if they hardly ever (or never) open one of your emails.
Just being in their inbox long enough is doing something for you: You remind them you exist. You stay top of mind.
Even engagement can sometimes be a misleading metric.
You’ve worked hard to acquire those subscribers in the first place. And nobody is saying you couldn’t flip the script & turn that ‘dead contact’ into a raving customer down the line.
If… you know how.
Besides, an argument can be made that there’s really no need to be so quick to remove contacts from your list right away.
You could run some re-engagement campaigns, advertise to your Email List, and do your very best to try to recapture some of those subscribers who have long left your emails in the dust.
Actually, you know what? Most businesses have a very simple approach to Email Marketing: Just… don’t do it. Sorry for calling you out.
Because of that, we often have to do our best to perform CPR on an almost dead list. And it can work. So don’t give up on them just yet!
Here’s what trying to re-engage your list can do for you:
- Rekindle old subscriber relationships which were once thought as ‘dead’ (and oftentimes even converting them into customers for the first time.)
- Determine whether those contacts are cut out to be in your list or not… before burning your ships & removing subscribers who might become valuable clients in the future.
If you’d like more info on how to run these types of campaigns, we’ll soon be writing a few articles on exactly how to make these & execute them for effective win back of lost contacts.
To conclude
We wish this article has helped you pick the right course of action as far as your list is concerned.
But, if you’re still dubious about whether to clean up your list or not, and would like my two cents on the matter, here it goes:
I would encourage you to make a conscious effort to check on your list at least every 6 months or so.
Don’t be so eager to get rid of contacts just yet, try to get them back first.
Things like a Sunset Unengaged Email Sequence, that targets the Unengaged Segment of your list to try to fall in love with your brand all over again.
You’ve worked hard to acquire those contacts in the first place, and you shouldn’t ditch them until you’re 99% sure they are ‘dead contacts’.
Run a few re engagement campaigns. Try to win back some of those subscribers.
If after doing everything in your power to get them to engage with your brand, they still aren’t opening any of your emails at all. Then, by all means, if you still want to remove them from your list, this could be a good time to do so.
Thanks for reading.
