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How to Cleanse an Email List?

by lerxtjr
11 replies
I have a client with an email list of about 4,000 that she's accumulated one by one as she's taken on new customers for about 12 years. She's never emailed to any of them and I'm trying to encourage her to get going marketing to them.

But a lot of those emails are old and I'm afraid to just barrage all of them and get her domain blacklisted.

So, how would you recommend we "cleanse" the list before we send to them? Just not seeing much info on google for this topic. Any free tools out there that help?

Could we just register a separate domain name and send to the whole list under that domain and wait for bouncebacks?

Thanks in advance.
#cleanse #email #list
  • Profile picture of the author AlanB
    Wow... 12 years... I bet you 3/4 of these people probably don't have the same email by now... And if they do... the leads are so cold, that they may not even be interested in your niche or service by now... I would recommend to just start fresh and build a brand new list again... Cheers!
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    • Profile picture of the author lerxtjr
      Yeah, I suggested she just dump anything before two years ago and go from there but I didn't get very far with that one. The client insists "her list" is made up of older people who would never change their emails after even 20 years. So, I gave up the battle and started looking into this.
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  • Profile picture of the author BruceWood
    Unfortunately, the list is probably worthless. If there's a way to sort it by the date the email was entered, I'd suggest simply not using anything over two years old. Even at that, recipients may not remember your client and push the spam button!
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    Bruce Wood
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  • Profile picture of the author Floyd Fisher
    Is this list already on an autoresponder?

    If not, entering them into an autoresponder should do the cleansing automatically, because they all would have to be confirmed before the autoresponder lets you send any email to them.

    If it already is on an autoresponder, my best advice is to switch autoresponders...and let the reconfirm from doing that do the cleansing for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    If you add this list into an auto-responder where people will have to reconfirm to be on the list, I think you will pretty quickly wind up with a non-existent list.

    Ask your customer how they would respond if someone they had made a purchase from 5 years ago all of a sudden made contact with them again, out of the blue.

    You know when someone you haven't seen for a very long time all of a sudden wants to catch up for a chat. The first thing we always think is, what does this person want?

    Any of those on your list who do get the email will probably be thinking the same thing. Business must not be going very well for this person if they are digging around and contacting me, a customer who bought something from them 5 years ago!

    Unless the relationship has continued since the purchase, I wouldn't like your chances of trying to forge a new relationship with those old clients now.
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  • Profile picture of the author richgrad
    Offer them an incredible bonus... retain the ones that are active
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    • Profile picture of the author lerxtjr
      @richgrad, I like the bonus idea, thansk for that.
      @willr, if they add their list to a 3rd part auto-resp, you're right, most people wouldn't reconfirm anyway. Heck, most people wouldn't even know to click the link anyway. So that's a sure fire way to kill the list.

      But, how about if we registered a whole different domain name and just sent emails out one by one? At least we'd be able to customize our message (3rd party mailer re-confirm messages are typically hard coded) and it wouldn't blacklist their main domain name.

      And, are there any tools you've heard of that can look to see if an email address is at least live without sending an email?
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      • Profile picture of the author WillR
        Originally Posted by lerxtjr View Post

        But, how about if we registered a whole different domain name and just sent emails out one by one? At least we'd be able to customize our message (3rd party mailer re-confirm messages are typically hard coded) and it wouldn't blacklist their main domain name.
        i just don't know whether the whole process is going to be worth it. A lot of the emails probably won't even get opened regardless as a lot of people would have forgotten about this business.

        It's a shame they don't have all the mailing addresses...
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  • Profile picture of the author Barry Unruh
    Originally Posted by lerxtjr View Post

    I have a client with an email list of about 4,000 that she's accumulated one by one as she's taken on new customers for about 12 years. She's never emailed to any of them and I'm trying to encourage her to get going marketing to them.
    I'm guessing if she took the time to collect email addresses she also has phone numbers and mailing addresses.

    Hire a high school student to call each customer. Give them a script informing them you are updating records and would like to verify their mailing address and email address. ASK THEM for permission to start sending them special offers by email. When the student gets a "No Thank You" remove them from the list. When you get a "I don't want the emails" remove them from the list. When you get "Here's my updated information" send them a coupon for the deepest discount she can afford.

    You now have a clean, active, and motivated list.

    Now the question, is it worth the cost of hiring the part-time high school student to do this. Of course, if anyone in her staff has extra time, they could start doing this immediately with no added cost. It might take 3 to 6 months, but is that so bad?

    Best wishes,

    Barry
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    • Profile picture of the author lerxtjr
      They do have phone numbers for almost everyone actually since they were paying clients over the years. Whether those are good or not is unsure, along with mailing addresses. Sounds like I'll be suggesting a variety of options to them and they can pick from there how much time they really want to spend on this.

      Let me know if more thoughts come to mind....or tools. Gotta be some tools out there somewhere to help. The only ones I've seen so far are tied to cleansing software but I don't see any of the sites offering prices. And, the few that I've sent emails in to I haven't heard back from, probably because the list size is too small. An organized software system for email cleansing I would think they'd want to work with 100,000 and up lists.
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      • Profile picture of the author lerxtjr
        Possible solution found! Looks like you just buy this program, install it on your desktop, import your list and go from there. Not an affiliate link by the way. I just came across it.
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