Just realized our email list was totally stale after that campaign bombed

I spent 3 months building a list for a local client here in Denver, and our big product launch email got like a 1% open rate. Turns out half those addresses were from a free lead magnet we ran two years ago that nobody actually wanted. I finally used a list cleaning tool and cut almost 40% of the subscribers. Has anyone else dealt with a dead list after a big push like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

lindamartin22d ago

Did you catch that piece from Marketing Brew a few months back about how most email lists degrade by like 20% a year? That tracks with what I've seen helping out a buddy with his landscaping business out here. We thought we had a goldmine of leads from a spring sale two years ago, but after cleaning it, the list was barely half of what we started with. The freebie people never opened anything after getting it, so we finally just cut them loose and saw open rates climb back to normal.

patricia31722d ago

Cut them loose and never looked back is exactly what I ended up doing too, @lindamartin. I felt bad at first because I thought we were losing potential customers, but the reality was those people were just clutter. After I cleaned house, our open rates went from 1% up to around 18% within a month. The biggest thing that worked for me was sending a quick "we're checking in" email first to see who actually clicked before I did the full scrub. That way I didnt accidentally dump someone who just forgot their password or something.