WEBVTT
00:00.531 --> 00:03.373
[SPEAKER_01]: It's started by shifting the way you think about your email list.
00:03.773 --> 00:05.775
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't treat it as a number to grow.
00:06.235 --> 00:09.137
[SPEAKER_01]: You should treat it as an audience you're responsible for.
00:09.357 --> 00:15.701
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you optimize subject lines, designs, automations, make sure you're ascendant to people who generally want to hear from you.
00:15.901 --> 00:23.146
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a healthy list makes every other optimization move, meaningful, and your measuring real engagement, not just noise.
00:25.859 --> 00:32.820
[SPEAKER_00]: you're listening to the keep optimizing podcast to increase your traffic improve your conversion rates and grow your profits.
00:35.728 --> 00:37.128
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome.
00:37.288 --> 00:41.209
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Chloe Thomas, the host of this e-commerce marketing focus podcast.
00:41.349 --> 00:49.051
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not familiar with our format, we release five episode mini series that dive deep into one e-commerce marketing topic.
00:49.451 --> 00:56.513
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be channels like email or SEO or Facebook ads or a big topic like acquisition, retention or analytics.
00:57.013 --> 00:57.833
[SPEAKER_02]: In each episode,
00:58.453 --> 01:04.956
[SPEAKER_02]: new ones released on Wednesdays, I get to interview a different expert to explore the latest advice on making it work for you.
01:05.376 --> 01:11.779
[SPEAKER_02]: And then after each five episode, many series, we take a week off to give you time to take action on what you've learned.
01:12.719 --> 01:15.961
[SPEAKER_02]: At the moment, we are deep in the world of email marketing.
01:16.001 --> 01:18.342
[SPEAKER_02]: We've had a few episodes all about what to you send.
01:18.542 --> 01:22.204
[SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, we're going to do more of like a who you send.
01:22.684 --> 01:24.545
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking deliverability, but
01:25.285 --> 01:27.946
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably not a part of deliverability you've heard about before.
01:27.966 --> 01:33.767
[SPEAKER_02]: This is about cleaning your list by sense checking it against databases of bad email data.
01:34.108 --> 01:42.170
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit more complicated than that, and I guess we'll be doing a really, really good job of explaining it in straightforward, concise ways.
01:42.950 --> 01:44.852
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be talking about why you should care about this.
01:44.892 --> 01:54.261
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be talking about the types of cleaning you should be doing and we'll be talking about the three key parts of your email marketing activity where you need to deploy this strategy.
01:55.122 --> 01:58.826
[SPEAKER_02]: Our guest also has some very cool top tips as well so make sure you listen to the end.
02:01.175 --> 02:05.316
[SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, I'm chatting with email marketing expert Nina Dillacruz.
02:05.816 --> 02:14.058
[SPEAKER_02]: Nina is one of the team at GetSight Control, an on-site engagement and email marketing platform used by thousands of e-commerce brands worldwide.
02:14.138 --> 02:14.958
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, Nina.
02:14.978 --> 02:17.939
[SPEAKER_02]: I Chloe, thank you for having me.
02:18.159 --> 02:20.220
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the reald to be here.
02:21.020 --> 02:22.560
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome to have you on the show.
02:22.580 --> 02:25.201
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you so much for putting forward this very cool topic.
02:25.641 --> 02:29.942
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we get into it though, how did you get into the world of email marketing?
02:31.218 --> 02:38.941
[SPEAKER_01]: I came into the world of email marketing and particularly at the topic of deliverability through my content marketing role.
02:39.461 --> 02:47.744
[SPEAKER_01]: I've spent the last several years creating educational content for e-commerce, marketers and brand owners, lately mostly around email.
02:47.924 --> 02:51.565
[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing I noticed over and over again is that
02:52.165 --> 03:12.961
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of conversations about creating a really catchy subject line or picking the perfect sand and time and email designs that drive clicks, but when I spend my hours weekly on Reddit, sourcing real-life stories about the challenges that e-commerce brands are facing every day.
03:13.802 --> 03:20.144
[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many stories with deliverability, with the struggles, with the deliverability.
03:20.825 --> 03:30.368
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I started digging deeper, what I realized is that a lot of conversations around deliverability are more technical.
03:30.468 --> 03:34.629
[SPEAKER_01]: Think people think that this is something your IT department should handle.
03:34.669 --> 03:41.452
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all about authentication, but the truth is, marketers are so much more in control here.
03:42.272 --> 03:45.174
[SPEAKER_01]: and this is why I like this topic.
03:45.474 --> 03:52.959
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of those rare areas where a relatively small change can have a meaningful impact and I'm excited to talk about it here today.
03:52.979 --> 04:02.465
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it is kind of mad how easy when you start looking at email to deliverability, you can get yourself completely confused with DMARX and SPFs and all sorts of
04:07.903 --> 04:12.587
[SPEAKER_02]: As I'm sure we're going to be talking about, it's a lot less important than a lot of other things we can be doing.
04:13.167 --> 04:30.261
[SPEAKER_01]: So, locally, yes, starting at 2024 when a jimalan Yahoo implemented new stricter guidelines for senders and especially bulk senders, all these authentication and the technical setup aren't just best practice their mandatory.
04:30.981 --> 04:32.863
[SPEAKER_01]: And the issue is often
04:33.644 --> 04:38.446
[SPEAKER_01]: not with the technical setup, it's with the health of your email list.
04:39.398 --> 04:40.058
[SPEAKER_02]: are completely.
04:40.118 --> 04:45.340
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's get into why is we should be cleaning our list before we send it.
04:45.980 --> 04:48.781
[SPEAKER_02]: First off, why do we care?
04:48.821 --> 04:50.482
[SPEAKER_02]: Why is this something we should be doing?
04:51.242 --> 04:56.384
[SPEAKER_01]: I can think of the reasons why it's crucial to clean your email lists.
04:57.124 --> 05:06.867
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, from the practical standpoint, you don't want to send email campaigns to invalid contacts or contacts who aren't interested
05:09.477 --> 05:10.099
[SPEAKER_01]: Number 2.
05:10.700 --> 05:18.620
[SPEAKER_01]: Most email marketing platforms charge you based on the size of your list, so you're literally paying for contacts.
05:19.512 --> 05:26.094
[SPEAKER_01]: that aren't interested in your content anymore, or invalid contacts if you've never cleaned your list.
05:26.754 --> 05:38.897
[SPEAKER_01]: And number three, the most important part, is that a large segment of disengaged or invalid contacts damage your Sander reputation in the long run.
05:39.237 --> 05:43.359
[SPEAKER_01]: It has a huge negative impact on your deliverability.
05:44.059 --> 05:48.000
[SPEAKER_02]: I know we always mention cost as a good reason to be cleaning your list,
05:49.362 --> 05:52.284
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much less important in my mind than the other two.
05:52.764 --> 05:53.544
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
05:53.944 --> 06:01.908
[SPEAKER_02]: The sender reputation and engagement from the honest, it's just so much more important than the cost, obviously it adds up over time and it's worth doing it.
06:02.008 --> 06:06.811
[SPEAKER_02]: But the real value is in getting more emails into the inbox.
06:07.431 --> 06:12.112
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, and then there is another consequence that we often forget about.
06:12.212 --> 06:19.194
[SPEAKER_01]: Your analytics becomes less reliable when your email list contains contacts who aren't engaged.
06:19.274 --> 06:28.376
[SPEAKER_01]: And if a significant portion of your email list is ignoring your emails, deleting them without even opening, it becomes more a charter to judge whether it
06:30.857 --> 06:38.385
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can spend hours optimizing your copy and design, but the underlying issue is in the audience quality.
06:38.565 --> 06:48.815
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you end up with is that the poor quality list makes you question every next marketing decision about your email marketing campaigns.
06:49.509 --> 06:51.471
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like building on a shaky foundation.
06:51.511 --> 06:53.392
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like everything is, oh, it might just be the list.
06:53.472 --> 06:54.313
[SPEAKER_02]: It might just be the list.
06:54.413 --> 06:55.293
[SPEAKER_02]: It might just be the list.
06:55.614 --> 06:57.975
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, that's that you can't move forwards.
06:57.995 --> 07:00.117
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's such a good point to add into the mix.
07:00.157 --> 07:04.681
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we're cleaning the list, what sort of things are we trying to get rid of?
07:05.655 --> 07:10.879
[SPEAKER_01]: There are normally two steps to clean an email list thoroughly that I recommend.
07:11.159 --> 07:23.809
[SPEAKER_01]: The first stage would be pre-cleaning that involves the process of checking the quality of your email list using domain intelligence and pattern signals.
07:24.089 --> 07:31.115
[SPEAKER_01]: And pre-cleaning stage helps you identify a risky email address that would include disposable
07:31.895 --> 07:41.121
[SPEAKER_01]: throw away addresses, the hide my email addresses, roll-based addresses, mistype domains and valid domains, things like that.
07:41.422 --> 07:55.471
[SPEAKER_01]: So after the pre-clean in stage, ideally, you should be able to identify, to see what your database actually looks like, what the quality of your list is, and identify the context you really don't want on your list.
07:55.491 --> 07:56.232
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to
07:57.032 --> 08:03.917
[SPEAKER_01]: send your campaigns to this context because they will not add to the performance of your campaign.
08:04.557 --> 08:24.351
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second stage usually involves SMTP verification that's more precise and deeper, usually paid procedure that you would use paid tools for, that will help you understand whether they email addresses on your list are valid and actually able to receive emails.
08:25.220 --> 08:46.532
[SPEAKER_02]: I personally find it fascinating in this space that it used to be that list cleaning was about identifying emails that were no longer being used, that the email platforms, hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc., may have grabbed in order to monitor bad behavior, to help improve what they let in and what they let out, you know.
08:47.112 --> 08:58.674
[SPEAKER_02]: If they know this customer hasn't logged in in 10 years and people are still emailing it, they know people they're not such responsible sender, so it can damage your sender reputation that yet that way.
08:59.355 --> 09:14.878
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, it's kind of like, it's become consumer behavior protection as well from those, I'll sign up to this list, but I just want the one reply that comes, so I'll get a single UC email address and helping you clear out all of that, which of course isn't going
09:17.238 --> 09:18.339
[SPEAKER_02]: to prong side of it.
09:18.359 --> 09:28.389
[SPEAKER_02]: We're cleaning up the stuff that's going to has the potential to damage our sender reputation, but we're also cleaning out the stuff of the people who had no interest in hearing from us in the first place.
09:29.049 --> 09:35.455
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Lord Lee, they have no interest, they have no intention to stay in touch with your brand to hear more from you.
09:35.835 --> 09:36.216
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you...
09:36.716 --> 09:40.157
[SPEAKER_01]: This relationship was over before you sent your first campaign.
09:40.197 --> 09:43.758
[SPEAKER_01]: They probably signed up for a lead magnet or discount.
09:43.878 --> 09:48.919
[SPEAKER_01]: And they used this throwaway address that they never going to log into again.
09:48.939 --> 10:00.221
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's another pipeline that I wanted to mention that least clean in is something that should also be a part of your ongoing email program.
10:00.382 --> 10:02.182
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm talking about engagement campaigns.
10:03.119 --> 10:08.444
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about when we do this.
10:08.924 --> 10:12.747
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I think, I think that's one of the things which is, okay, great.
10:12.767 --> 10:14.189
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've got, we've got our list.
10:14.229 --> 10:18.152
[SPEAKER_02]: We want to tidy it up before we start sending, or before we send to it anymore.
10:19.353 --> 10:22.534
[SPEAKER_02]: There's that question of when do you actually do the tidying up?
10:22.554 --> 10:26.576
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, is this something we have to run our whole list through a checker every week?
10:27.116 --> 10:31.918
[SPEAKER_02]: Or do we just run our new sign-up through a checker and then we do it occasionally?
10:32.299 --> 10:34.780
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you just mentioned re-engagement campaigns as well.
10:34.920 --> 10:39.842
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the few of the key moments where we should be checking our list?
10:40.782 --> 10:54.171
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great question because I think sometimes e-commerce brands start thinking about this too late when deliverability problems are already there and a little harder to fix.
10:54.231 --> 11:00.775
[SPEAKER_01]: So three moments when you should think about the quality of your list and check it thoroughly.
11:01.881 --> 11:07.087
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, when you are migrating from one email marketing platform to another.
11:07.167 --> 11:15.716
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you're exporting your email list and importing it to a new account, you should always pre-clean it.
11:15.736 --> 11:21.862
[SPEAKER_01]: You should always run a quality check and not only because of all the reasons we've talked about already, but because
11:22.843 --> 11:38.973
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of email marketing platforms that will pause your campaign that will suspend your account even before you send your first newsletter if your list displays signs off risky email addresses on it.
11:39.793 --> 11:48.135
[SPEAKER_01]: So you want to make sure that when you're migrating when you're changing platforms, you are confident in the quality of your list.
11:48.815 --> 11:50.016
[SPEAKER_01]: That's number one.
11:50.796 --> 12:00.718
[SPEAKER_01]: The second moment, if you are growing your email list aggressively, especially through give ways, through partnerships, through lead magnet campaigns.
12:01.459 --> 12:02.439
[SPEAKER_01]: And you,
12:03.059 --> 12:10.003
[SPEAKER_01]: understand that a lot of people who will join your list might be using disposable addresses.
12:10.963 --> 12:14.886
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to include all of them to your list right away.
12:15.446 --> 12:22.630
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to run pretty cleaning and remove the addresses that are unlikely to engage with your future campaigns.
12:23.737 --> 12:39.304
[SPEAKER_01]: And the third moment that is crucial, and I'm seeing it over and over again with e-commerce brands, is when someone decides to re-engage a huge dormant segment of audience all at once, overnight.
12:40.244 --> 12:44.007
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can think about it from the mailbox provider perspective.
12:44.427 --> 12:49.932
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say there are thousands of subscribers who haven't heard from you for months or maybe a year.
12:50.852 --> 13:08.826
[SPEAKER_01]: And you want to reach them all with your new offer with your rivals with the Black Friday promo after being challenged from the perspective of a mailbox provider that looks like a campaign going to a large audience who doesn't really want to hear from you or is unlikely to engage with your
13:10.147 --> 13:23.939
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is another moment to pre-clean, to check your list and make sure you are sending emails only to real subscribers who were engaged previously and you did gradually.
13:24.961 --> 13:31.245
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's, I mean, all three of those are such great times to be doing this, but to get into the re-engagement one.
13:31.705 --> 13:38.089
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know that a lot of brands male, various people less when they're outside of key buying seasons.
13:38.549 --> 13:40.270
[SPEAKER_02]: So how simple is it to go right?
13:40.310 --> 13:45.594
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the group we're about to try and get interested in Black Friday who we've ignored for a few months.
13:46.154 --> 13:47.475
[SPEAKER_02]: First, let's clean the list.
13:47.675 --> 13:50.817
[SPEAKER_02]: Secondly, let's not send to them all on the same day.
13:51.177 --> 13:53.539
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it's so simple.
13:54.299 --> 14:09.302
[SPEAKER_02]: but it can protect your reputation because if you do that, if you get that wrong, then all your emails, even from those people you've been emailing weekly or more regularly than that and who have been buying loads, even those won't get delivered as well, if you get the reactivation wrong.
14:10.063 --> 14:18.611
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of the biggest problems you need to understand that mailbox providers are continuously evaluating your campaigns.
14:18.651 --> 14:24.836
[SPEAKER_01]: They each campaign creates some sort of a reputation store card that you are evaluated against.
14:25.436 --> 14:28.239
[SPEAKER_01]: And each campaign affects the next one.
14:28.279 --> 14:28.819
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you
14:29.680 --> 14:43.327
[SPEAKER_01]: damage your reputation, your send of reputation, even people who want to hear from you who are looking forward to receiving your emails might not hear from you because of all those it disengaged contacts you've been blasting.
14:44.260 --> 14:48.962
[SPEAKER_02]: And then your point about the second one about when to check about aggressive list growth.
14:49.722 --> 15:00.707
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's such a good thing to be doing because if you're doing a big aggressive program, be it a big shiny lead magna or a major prize give away or something to grow your list.
15:01.267 --> 15:04.109
[SPEAKER_02]: We all know not all that data is going to be worth gathering.
15:04.629 --> 15:09.731
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're monitoring the performance in the lifetime value of the customers that come out of it.
15:13.993 --> 15:21.155
[SPEAKER_02]: but then to also be going, not just let's focus on the good that comes out of it, but let's remove the bad that comes out of it.
15:21.795 --> 15:23.475
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's such a good move as well.
15:23.535 --> 15:32.017
[SPEAKER_02]: I would certainly with that with those lists, not just be filtering the data, checking the data before we really start sending to it.
15:32.117 --> 15:40.919
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd also be really closely monitoring the engagement levels of that data and being a bit harsh of the normal on who we stop bothering to send to.
15:40.959 --> 15:42.199
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you agree with that, Nina?
15:42.839 --> 15:49.004
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't agree more, Clay, and it's not really just an opinion or the best practice.
15:49.625 --> 15:55.890
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the Sander guidelines by Google or Yahoo, they encourage
16:01.233 --> 16:09.660
[SPEAKER_01]: on a regular basis, and that means that mailbox providers expect this from responsible centers.
16:10.301 --> 16:19.149
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that will probably become a norm, and I believe that engagement signals will met a much more in the near future.
16:20.137 --> 16:23.738
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's some basic, good list hygiene.
16:24.138 --> 16:28.339
[SPEAKER_02]: It just delivers in so anyways, and nowadays you can automate it so easily.
16:28.799 --> 16:34.801
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's not got used to be a nightmare trying to do this five, six years ago, but now it's so much easier.
16:34.821 --> 16:37.901
[SPEAKER_02]: There really is no excuse for keeping your data nice and clean.
16:38.501 --> 16:44.343
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's that anything we've missed about pre-send list cleaning that the audience need to know about.
16:45.043 --> 17:00.918
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's important to mention that the text book idea of growing your email list is when you have an email sign up pop up on your website, or maybe you collect emails at checkout, but the reality is so much messier sometimes.
17:01.038 --> 17:05.682
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen ecommerce brands collecting emails through various channels.
17:06.282 --> 17:16.111
[SPEAKER_01]: And that includes offline events, trade shows and pop-up events, that includes separate sign-up forums on social media that includes partnerships, again, giveaways.
17:16.792 --> 17:31.025
[SPEAKER_01]: So each of these channels has its own challenges, starting from typos to disposable email addresses, and you need to take into consideration the ways that contacts and
17:31.485 --> 17:38.551
[SPEAKER_01]: in your email list before you start the analysis before you add them to the list and to your campaigns.
17:39.692 --> 17:41.533
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great advice there again, Nina.
17:41.593 --> 17:42.134
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
17:42.254 --> 17:47.138
[SPEAKER_02]: So everybody, Nina, it's been great picking your brains about email is pre-cleaning.
17:47.158 --> 17:49.620
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, listeners, make sure you stay tuned.
17:49.740 --> 17:58.747
[SPEAKER_02]: Right to the end, you don't miss out on Nina's insider tips on email marketing and my suggestions for more free resources to help you improve things even further in your business.
18:00.674 --> 18:04.875
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, Nina, so far we've gone deep into email list pre-cleaning.
18:05.415 --> 18:09.156
[SPEAKER_02]: And now you get to ours with your insider knowledge about the whole of email marketing.
18:09.196 --> 18:16.498
[SPEAKER_02]: So for the following questions, your answer can be anything to do with email marketing, which of course does include everything we've already been talking about.
18:16.558 --> 18:17.358
[SPEAKER_02]: Nina, are you ready?
18:17.958 --> 18:18.318
[SPEAKER_02]: I am.
18:18.938 --> 18:21.039
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, let's start with newbie advice.
18:21.179 --> 18:26.820
[SPEAKER_02]: If we've inspired someone to take their first step, what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
18:27.780 --> 18:30.602
[SPEAKER_01]: It's started by shifting the way you think about your email list.
18:31.283 --> 18:33.264
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't treat it as a number to grow.
18:33.704 --> 18:36.626
[SPEAKER_01]: You should treat it as an audience you're responsible for.
18:37.247 --> 18:43.891
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you optimize subject lines, designs, automations, make sure you're a sentence to people who generally want to hear from you.
18:44.672 --> 18:52.297
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a healthy list makes every other optimization move, meaningful, and your measuring real engagement, not just noise.
18:53.533 --> 18:54.313
[SPEAKER_02]: nice like it.
18:54.453 --> 19:00.456
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay once you've started of course you've got to keep optimizing so what's your favorite way to improve performance.
19:01.196 --> 19:05.838
[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite way to keep optimizing is automate in whatever you can.
19:06.199 --> 19:20.385
[SPEAKER_01]: So in this case you want to automate the way contacts enter your email list by adding double opting by adding recapture and preventing bots and typos from getting to your list in the first place.
19:21.305 --> 19:25.189
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second step would be set and up an automated ring engagement workflow.
19:25.750 --> 19:35.059
[SPEAKER_01]: It serves both to rekindle relationship with dormant subscribers and also clean your list by removing those who lost interest in your brand.
19:35.639 --> 19:40.904
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think about it, doesn't gauge subscribers are an very early warning,
19:41.765 --> 19:52.375
[SPEAKER_01]: sign that you should pay attention to and if you notice that that segment is growing it's usually telling you something about your email program before your overall performance drops.
19:53.196 --> 19:53.977
[SPEAKER_02]: Nicely put.
19:54.097 --> 19:59.222
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if someone this thing wants to learn more, is there one cheap or free resource you would recommend?
20:00.282 --> 20:05.203
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, I'd like to recommend subscribing to keep optimizing podcasts.
20:05.744 --> 20:06.604
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thank you.
20:07.224 --> 20:08.704
[SPEAKER_01]: It's quite a treasure trove.
20:08.764 --> 20:09.365
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a fan.
20:10.085 --> 20:12.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, of course, Google's postmaster tools.
20:12.926 --> 20:17.187
[SPEAKER_01]: It's absolutely free, and it helps you understand how Gmail sees your sender reputation.
20:18.227 --> 20:22.951
[SPEAKER_01]: And number three is the email quality checker by Getset Control.
20:23.731 --> 20:38.042
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a free tool that helps you upload up to 50,000 contacts and analyze the quality of your list by identifying risky addresses without using SMTP verification.
20:38.603 --> 20:44.807
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, you'll have a list of addresses that seem to be disposable,
20:45.748 --> 20:50.071
[SPEAKER_01]: throw away masked relay, mistype domains, invalid domains.
20:50.371 --> 20:53.794
[SPEAKER_01]: So the context that you don't really want to have on your list.
20:54.715 --> 20:56.376
[SPEAKER_02]: Top, top, top tips there.
20:56.416 --> 20:59.598
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'd almost forgotten about Google postmaster tools as well.
20:59.678 --> 21:03.161
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm clearly going to be logging into that straight after this.
21:03.181 --> 21:05.082
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a checkup on us.
21:06.323 --> 21:08.785
[SPEAKER_02]: Finally, Nina, a crystal ball time.
21:08.865 --> 21:11.567
[SPEAKER_02]: What's coming up in the next six to 12 months that we should be
21:13.475 --> 21:27.776
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're moving toward a world where mailbox providers will start carrying more about engagement signals, of course, is always mattered, but I think it's going to become an even stronger predictor of.
21:28.837 --> 21:43.750
[SPEAKER_01]: you are a center reputation and that means marketers will need to spend less time asking how I can reach more people and start asking questions like who should receive these campaign and how exactly can I encourage engagement.
21:44.745 --> 21:45.365
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you're right.
21:45.385 --> 21:49.547
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's the trajectory we've been on for a while and I completely agree.
21:49.687 --> 21:57.230
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're going to get, it's going to become ever more important to be tidying up that back end of the list and the front end of the list as well as you've outlined.
21:57.250 --> 22:00.212
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, thank you so much for coming on the show.
22:00.252 --> 22:01.292
[SPEAKER_02]: We're nearly at the end.
22:01.792 --> 22:05.374
[SPEAKER_02]: So could you please let the listeners know where they can find you and your business?
22:06.328 --> 22:10.312
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you'd like to connect, I'm happy to connect over on LinkedIn.
22:10.732 --> 22:12.053
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Nina Delacruz.
22:12.874 --> 22:20.741
[SPEAKER_01]: And if today's conversation made you curious about the health of your email list, at Gatsai Control, we've built a free email quality checker.
22:21.382 --> 22:31.591
[SPEAKER_01]: You can upload your list and quickly spot things like disposable email addresses, roll-based inboxes, relay email addresses, and other potential risky
22:32.412 --> 22:32.992
[SPEAKER_01]: addresses.
22:33.673 --> 22:39.475
[SPEAKER_01]: It also assigns quality squares to all contacts so you can build segments based on the potential value.
22:39.575 --> 22:44.758
[SPEAKER_01]: It's totally free and it's an easy way to understand where your database actually looks like.
22:45.798 --> 22:46.759
[SPEAKER_02]: Nina, that's awesome.
22:46.799 --> 22:49.280
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much being on the key optimizing podcast.
22:49.300 --> 22:54.323
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm for so clearly explaining such an important part of our email marketing mix to us.
22:54.463 --> 22:55.543
[SPEAKER_02]: Really appreciate it.
22:55.583 --> 22:56.183
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Nina.
22:56.864 --> 22:58.084
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Cloy.
22:58.184 --> 22:59.525
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a pleasure talking to
23:03.554 --> 23:27.054
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you aren't already keeping your list tidy, both in terms of measuring the engagement levels within your list and doing those external cleaning tasks, which I highly, highly recommend, should be a part of your usual email activity, then it's time to do it because it could, so if something goes wrong, it could affect
23:27.294 --> 23:39.264
[SPEAKER_02]: the deliverability of all your emails, but also it's increasingly important to keep your emails effective, the deliverability good, getting into the inbox, getting the response rates you want and everything else.
23:39.925 --> 23:45.870
[SPEAKER_02]: You can get the links to the things we discussed, the full transcript of the episode, our notes are more at keepoptimizing.com.
23:46.370 --> 23:49.033
[SPEAKER_02]: You can also use our special direct episode short links.
23:49.513 --> 23:56.556
[SPEAKER_02]: just put keepopt.com forward slash the number of the episode into the URL bar and you will go straight to the right page of the site.
23:56.957 --> 24:02.399
[SPEAKER_02]: When you get there why not add yourself to our email list and grab our latest ebook whilst you're doing it.
24:02.519 --> 24:03.740
[SPEAKER_02]: Go on, you know you want to.
24:04.660 --> 24:08.823
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Keep Optimizing podcast.
24:09.604 --> 24:19.692
[SPEAKER_02]: If you've enjoyed this episode, then check out episode 227, the little while ago, where we get deep into privacy strategies with Savorn Solberg,
24:20.292 --> 24:30.661
[SPEAKER_02]: because I think in some in many ways it builds on this it's all about list quality and clarity with your audience but through the lens of good legal privacy strategies as well.
24:31.181 --> 24:34.904
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot easier listening than it than I've made it sound but I think you'll like that one.
24:35.344 --> 24:43.011
[SPEAKER_02]: You could also find our full thread of email marketing content by scrolling up your feed or using the short link keep up dot com forward slash email.
24:43.591 --> 24:51.015
[SPEAKER_02]: Please do tell your fellow marketers about the show because I want to help as many marketers as possible to improve the performance of their e-commerce marketing.
24:51.535 --> 24:57.479
[SPEAKER_02]: Have a great week and make sure you listen to the next episode so I can help you to keep optimizing your marketing.
00:00.531 --> 00:03.373
[SPEAKER_01]: It's started by shifting the way you think about your email list.
00:03.773 --> 00:05.775
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't treat it as a number to grow.
00:06.235 --> 00:09.137
[SPEAKER_01]: You should treat it as an audience you're responsible for.
00:09.357 --> 00:15.701
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you optimize subject lines, designs, automations, make sure you're ascendant to people who generally want to hear from you.
00:15.901 --> 00:23.146
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a healthy list makes every other optimization move, meaningful, and your measuring real engagement, not just noise.
00:25.859 --> 00:32.820
[SPEAKER_00]: you're listening to the keep optimizing podcast to increase your traffic improve your conversion rates and grow your profits.
00:35.728 --> 00:37.128
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome.
00:37.288 --> 00:41.209
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Chloe Thomas, the host of this e-commerce marketing focus podcast.
00:41.349 --> 00:49.051
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not familiar with our format, we release five episode mini series that dive deep into one e-commerce marketing topic.
00:49.451 --> 00:56.513
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be channels like email or SEO or Facebook ads or a big topic like acquisition, retention or analytics.
00:57.013 --> 00:57.833
[SPEAKER_02]: In each episode,
00:58.453 --> 01:04.956
[SPEAKER_02]: new ones released on Wednesdays, I get to interview a different expert to explore the latest advice on making it work for you.
01:05.376 --> 01:11.779
[SPEAKER_02]: And then after each five episode, many series, we take a week off to give you time to take action on what you've learned.
01:12.719 --> 01:15.961
[SPEAKER_02]: At the moment, we are deep in the world of email marketing.
01:16.001 --> 01:18.342
[SPEAKER_02]: We've had a few episodes all about what to you send.
01:18.542 --> 01:22.204
[SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, we're going to do more of like a who you send.
01:22.684 --> 01:24.545
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking deliverability, but
01:25.285 --> 01:27.946
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably not a part of deliverability you've heard about before.
01:27.966 --> 01:33.767
[SPEAKER_02]: This is about cleaning your list by sense checking it against databases of bad email data.
01:34.108 --> 01:42.170
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit more complicated than that, and I guess we'll be doing a really, really good job of explaining it in straightforward, concise ways.
01:42.950 --> 01:44.852
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be talking about why you should care about this.
01:44.892 --> 01:54.261
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be talking about the types of cleaning you should be doing and we'll be talking about the three key parts of your email marketing activity where you need to deploy this strategy.
01:55.122 --> 01:58.826
[SPEAKER_02]: Our guest also has some very cool top tips as well so make sure you listen to the end.
02:01.175 --> 02:05.316
[SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, I'm chatting with email marketing expert Nina Dillacruz.
02:05.816 --> 02:14.058
[SPEAKER_02]: Nina is one of the team at GetSight Control, an on-site engagement and email marketing platform used by thousands of e-commerce brands worldwide.
02:14.138 --> 02:14.958
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, Nina.
02:14.978 --> 02:17.939
[SPEAKER_02]: I Chloe, thank you for having me.
02:18.159 --> 02:20.220
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the reald to be here.
02:21.020 --> 02:22.560
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome to have you on the show.
02:22.580 --> 02:25.201
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you so much for putting forward this very cool topic.
02:25.641 --> 02:29.942
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we get into it though, how did you get into the world of email marketing?
02:31.218 --> 02:38.941
[SPEAKER_01]: I came into the world of email marketing and particularly at the topic of deliverability through my content marketing role.
02:39.461 --> 02:47.744
[SPEAKER_01]: I've spent the last several years creating educational content for e-commerce, marketers and brand owners, lately mostly around email.
02:47.924 --> 02:51.565
[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing I noticed over and over again is that
02:52.165 --> 03:12.961
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of conversations about creating a really catchy subject line or picking the perfect sand and time and email designs that drive clicks, but when I spend my hours weekly on Reddit, sourcing real-life stories about the challenges that e-commerce brands are facing every day.
03:13.802 --> 03:20.144
[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many stories with deliverability, with the struggles, with the deliverability.
03:20.825 --> 03:30.368
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I started digging deeper, what I realized is that a lot of conversations around deliverability are more technical.
03:30.468 --> 03:34.629
[SPEAKER_01]: Think people think that this is something your IT department should handle.
03:34.669 --> 03:41.452
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all about authentication, but the truth is, marketers are so much more in control here.
03:42.272 --> 03:45.174
[SPEAKER_01]: and this is why I like this topic.
03:45.474 --> 03:52.959
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of those rare areas where a relatively small change can have a meaningful impact and I'm excited to talk about it here today.
03:52.979 --> 04:02.465
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it is kind of mad how easy when you start looking at email to deliverability, you can get yourself completely confused with DMARX and SPFs and all sorts of
04:07.903 --> 04:12.587
[SPEAKER_02]: As I'm sure we're going to be talking about, it's a lot less important than a lot of other things we can be doing.
04:13.167 --> 04:30.261
[SPEAKER_01]: So, locally, yes, starting at 2024 when a jimalan Yahoo implemented new stricter guidelines for senders and especially bulk senders, all these authentication and the technical setup aren't just best practice their mandatory.
04:30.981 --> 04:32.863
[SPEAKER_01]: And the issue is often
04:33.644 --> 04:38.446
[SPEAKER_01]: not with the technical setup, it's with the health of your email list.
04:39.398 --> 04:40.058
[SPEAKER_02]: are completely.
04:40.118 --> 04:45.340
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's get into why is we should be cleaning our list before we send it.
04:45.980 --> 04:48.781
[SPEAKER_02]: First off, why do we care?
04:48.821 --> 04:50.482
[SPEAKER_02]: Why is this something we should be doing?
04:51.242 --> 04:56.384
[SPEAKER_01]: I can think of the reasons why it's crucial to clean your email lists.
04:57.124 --> 05:06.867
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, from the practical standpoint, you don't want to send email campaigns to invalid contacts or contacts who aren't interested
05:09.477 --> 05:10.099
[SPEAKER_01]: Number 2.
05:10.700 --> 05:18.620
[SPEAKER_01]: Most email marketing platforms charge you based on the size of your list, so you're literally paying for contacts.
05:19.512 --> 05:26.094
[SPEAKER_01]: that aren't interested in your content anymore, or invalid contacts if you've never cleaned your list.
05:26.754 --> 05:38.897
[SPEAKER_01]: And number three, the most important part, is that a large segment of disengaged or invalid contacts damage your Sander reputation in the long run.
05:39.237 --> 05:43.359
[SPEAKER_01]: It has a huge negative impact on your deliverability.
05:44.059 --> 05:48.000
[SPEAKER_02]: I know we always mention cost as a good reason to be cleaning your list,
05:49.362 --> 05:52.284
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much less important in my mind than the other two.
05:52.764 --> 05:53.544
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
05:53.944 --> 06:01.908
[SPEAKER_02]: The sender reputation and engagement from the honest, it's just so much more important than the cost, obviously it adds up over time and it's worth doing it.
06:02.008 --> 06:06.811
[SPEAKER_02]: But the real value is in getting more emails into the inbox.
06:07.431 --> 06:12.112
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, and then there is another consequence that we often forget about.
06:12.212 --> 06:19.194
[SPEAKER_01]: Your analytics becomes less reliable when your email list contains contacts who aren't engaged.
06:19.274 --> 06:28.376
[SPEAKER_01]: And if a significant portion of your email list is ignoring your emails, deleting them without even opening, it becomes more a charter to judge whether it
06:30.857 --> 06:38.385
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can spend hours optimizing your copy and design, but the underlying issue is in the audience quality.
06:38.565 --> 06:48.815
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you end up with is that the poor quality list makes you question every next marketing decision about your email marketing campaigns.
06:49.509 --> 06:51.471
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like building on a shaky foundation.
06:51.511 --> 06:53.392
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like everything is, oh, it might just be the list.
06:53.472 --> 06:54.313
[SPEAKER_02]: It might just be the list.
06:54.413 --> 06:55.293
[SPEAKER_02]: It might just be the list.
06:55.614 --> 06:57.975
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, that's that you can't move forwards.
06:57.995 --> 07:00.117
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's such a good point to add into the mix.
07:00.157 --> 07:04.681
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we're cleaning the list, what sort of things are we trying to get rid of?
07:05.655 --> 07:10.879
[SPEAKER_01]: There are normally two steps to clean an email list thoroughly that I recommend.
07:11.159 --> 07:23.809
[SPEAKER_01]: The first stage would be pre-cleaning that involves the process of checking the quality of your email list using domain intelligence and pattern signals.
07:24.089 --> 07:31.115
[SPEAKER_01]: And pre-cleaning stage helps you identify a risky email address that would include disposable
07:31.895 --> 07:41.121
[SPEAKER_01]: throw away addresses, the hide my email addresses, roll-based addresses, mistype domains and valid domains, things like that.
07:41.422 --> 07:55.471
[SPEAKER_01]: So after the pre-clean in stage, ideally, you should be able to identify, to see what your database actually looks like, what the quality of your list is, and identify the context you really don't want on your list.
07:55.491 --> 07:56.232
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to
07:57.032 --> 08:03.917
[SPEAKER_01]: send your campaigns to this context because they will not add to the performance of your campaign.
08:04.557 --> 08:24.351
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second stage usually involves SMTP verification that's more precise and deeper, usually paid procedure that you would use paid tools for, that will help you understand whether they email addresses on your list are valid and actually able to receive emails.
08:25.220 --> 08:46.532
[SPEAKER_02]: I personally find it fascinating in this space that it used to be that list cleaning was about identifying emails that were no longer being used, that the email platforms, hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc., may have grabbed in order to monitor bad behavior, to help improve what they let in and what they let out, you know.
08:47.112 --> 08:58.674
[SPEAKER_02]: If they know this customer hasn't logged in in 10 years and people are still emailing it, they know people they're not such responsible sender, so it can damage your sender reputation that yet that way.
08:59.355 --> 09:14.878
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, it's kind of like, it's become consumer behavior protection as well from those, I'll sign up to this list, but I just want the one reply that comes, so I'll get a single UC email address and helping you clear out all of that, which of course isn't going
09:17.238 --> 09:18.339
[SPEAKER_02]: to prong side of it.
09:18.359 --> 09:28.389
[SPEAKER_02]: We're cleaning up the stuff that's going to has the potential to damage our sender reputation, but we're also cleaning out the stuff of the people who had no interest in hearing from us in the first place.
09:29.049 --> 09:35.455
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Lord Lee, they have no interest, they have no intention to stay in touch with your brand to hear more from you.
09:35.835 --> 09:36.216
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you...
09:36.716 --> 09:40.157
[SPEAKER_01]: This relationship was over before you sent your first campaign.
09:40.197 --> 09:43.758
[SPEAKER_01]: They probably signed up for a lead magnet or discount.
09:43.878 --> 09:48.919
[SPEAKER_01]: And they used this throwaway address that they never going to log into again.
09:48.939 --> 10:00.221
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's another pipeline that I wanted to mention that least clean in is something that should also be a part of your ongoing email program.
10:00.382 --> 10:02.182
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm talking about engagement campaigns.
10:03.119 --> 10:08.444
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about when we do this.
10:08.924 --> 10:12.747
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I think, I think that's one of the things which is, okay, great.
10:12.767 --> 10:14.189
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've got, we've got our list.
10:14.229 --> 10:18.152
[SPEAKER_02]: We want to tidy it up before we start sending, or before we send to it anymore.
10:19.353 --> 10:22.534
[SPEAKER_02]: There's that question of when do you actually do the tidying up?
10:22.554 --> 10:26.576
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, is this something we have to run our whole list through a checker every week?
10:27.116 --> 10:31.918
[SPEAKER_02]: Or do we just run our new sign-up through a checker and then we do it occasionally?
10:32.299 --> 10:34.780
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you just mentioned re-engagement campaigns as well.
10:34.920 --> 10:39.842
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the few of the key moments where we should be checking our list?
10:40.782 --> 10:54.171
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great question because I think sometimes e-commerce brands start thinking about this too late when deliverability problems are already there and a little harder to fix.
10:54.231 --> 11:00.775
[SPEAKER_01]: So three moments when you should think about the quality of your list and check it thoroughly.
11:01.881 --> 11:07.087
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, when you are migrating from one email marketing platform to another.
11:07.167 --> 11:15.716
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you're exporting your email list and importing it to a new account, you should always pre-clean it.
11:15.736 --> 11:21.862
[SPEAKER_01]: You should always run a quality check and not only because of all the reasons we've talked about already, but because
11:22.843 --> 11:38.973
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of email marketing platforms that will pause your campaign that will suspend your account even before you send your first newsletter if your list displays signs off risky email addresses on it.
11:39.793 --> 11:48.135
[SPEAKER_01]: So you want to make sure that when you're migrating when you're changing platforms, you are confident in the quality of your list.
11:48.815 --> 11:50.016
[SPEAKER_01]: That's number one.
11:50.796 --> 12:00.718
[SPEAKER_01]: The second moment, if you are growing your email list aggressively, especially through give ways, through partnerships, through lead magnet campaigns.
12:01.459 --> 12:02.439
[SPEAKER_01]: And you,
12:03.059 --> 12:10.003
[SPEAKER_01]: understand that a lot of people who will join your list might be using disposable addresses.
12:10.963 --> 12:14.886
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to include all of them to your list right away.
12:15.446 --> 12:22.630
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to run pretty cleaning and remove the addresses that are unlikely to engage with your future campaigns.
12:23.737 --> 12:39.304
[SPEAKER_01]: And the third moment that is crucial, and I'm seeing it over and over again with e-commerce brands, is when someone decides to re-engage a huge dormant segment of audience all at once, overnight.
12:40.244 --> 12:44.007
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can think about it from the mailbox provider perspective.
12:44.427 --> 12:49.932
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say there are thousands of subscribers who haven't heard from you for months or maybe a year.
12:50.852 --> 13:08.826
[SPEAKER_01]: And you want to reach them all with your new offer with your rivals with the Black Friday promo after being challenged from the perspective of a mailbox provider that looks like a campaign going to a large audience who doesn't really want to hear from you or is unlikely to engage with your
13:10.147 --> 13:23.939
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is another moment to pre-clean, to check your list and make sure you are sending emails only to real subscribers who were engaged previously and you did gradually.
13:24.961 --> 13:31.245
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's, I mean, all three of those are such great times to be doing this, but to get into the re-engagement one.
13:31.705 --> 13:38.089
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know that a lot of brands male, various people less when they're outside of key buying seasons.
13:38.549 --> 13:40.270
[SPEAKER_02]: So how simple is it to go right?
13:40.310 --> 13:45.594
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the group we're about to try and get interested in Black Friday who we've ignored for a few months.
13:46.154 --> 13:47.475
[SPEAKER_02]: First, let's clean the list.
13:47.675 --> 13:50.817
[SPEAKER_02]: Secondly, let's not send to them all on the same day.
13:51.177 --> 13:53.539
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it's so simple.
13:54.299 --> 14:09.302
[SPEAKER_02]: but it can protect your reputation because if you do that, if you get that wrong, then all your emails, even from those people you've been emailing weekly or more regularly than that and who have been buying loads, even those won't get delivered as well, if you get the reactivation wrong.
14:10.063 --> 14:18.611
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of the biggest problems you need to understand that mailbox providers are continuously evaluating your campaigns.
14:18.651 --> 14:24.836
[SPEAKER_01]: They each campaign creates some sort of a reputation store card that you are evaluated against.
14:25.436 --> 14:28.239
[SPEAKER_01]: And each campaign affects the next one.
14:28.279 --> 14:28.819
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you
14:29.680 --> 14:43.327
[SPEAKER_01]: damage your reputation, your send of reputation, even people who want to hear from you who are looking forward to receiving your emails might not hear from you because of all those it disengaged contacts you've been blasting.
14:44.260 --> 14:48.962
[SPEAKER_02]: And then your point about the second one about when to check about aggressive list growth.
14:49.722 --> 15:00.707
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's such a good thing to be doing because if you're doing a big aggressive program, be it a big shiny lead magna or a major prize give away or something to grow your list.
15:01.267 --> 15:04.109
[SPEAKER_02]: We all know not all that data is going to be worth gathering.
15:04.629 --> 15:09.731
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're monitoring the performance in the lifetime value of the customers that come out of it.
15:13.993 --> 15:21.155
[SPEAKER_02]: but then to also be going, not just let's focus on the good that comes out of it, but let's remove the bad that comes out of it.
15:21.795 --> 15:23.475
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's such a good move as well.
15:23.535 --> 15:32.017
[SPEAKER_02]: I would certainly with that with those lists, not just be filtering the data, checking the data before we really start sending to it.
15:32.117 --> 15:40.919
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd also be really closely monitoring the engagement levels of that data and being a bit harsh of the normal on who we stop bothering to send to.
15:40.959 --> 15:42.199
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you agree with that, Nina?
15:42.839 --> 15:49.004
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't agree more, Clay, and it's not really just an opinion or the best practice.
15:49.625 --> 15:55.890
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the Sander guidelines by Google or Yahoo, they encourage
16:01.233 --> 16:09.660
[SPEAKER_01]: on a regular basis, and that means that mailbox providers expect this from responsible centers.
16:10.301 --> 16:19.149
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that will probably become a norm, and I believe that engagement signals will met a much more in the near future.
16:20.137 --> 16:23.738
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's some basic, good list hygiene.
16:24.138 --> 16:28.339
[SPEAKER_02]: It just delivers in so anyways, and nowadays you can automate it so easily.
16:28.799 --> 16:34.801
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's not got used to be a nightmare trying to do this five, six years ago, but now it's so much easier.
16:34.821 --> 16:37.901
[SPEAKER_02]: There really is no excuse for keeping your data nice and clean.
16:38.501 --> 16:44.343
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's that anything we've missed about pre-send list cleaning that the audience need to know about.
16:45.043 --> 17:00.918
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's important to mention that the text book idea of growing your email list is when you have an email sign up pop up on your website, or maybe you collect emails at checkout, but the reality is so much messier sometimes.
17:01.038 --> 17:05.682
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen ecommerce brands collecting emails through various channels.
17:06.282 --> 17:16.111
[SPEAKER_01]: And that includes offline events, trade shows and pop-up events, that includes separate sign-up forums on social media that includes partnerships, again, giveaways.
17:16.792 --> 17:31.025
[SPEAKER_01]: So each of these channels has its own challenges, starting from typos to disposable email addresses, and you need to take into consideration the ways that contacts and
17:31.485 --> 17:38.551
[SPEAKER_01]: in your email list before you start the analysis before you add them to the list and to your campaigns.
17:39.692 --> 17:41.533
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great advice there again, Nina.
17:41.593 --> 17:42.134
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
17:42.254 --> 17:47.138
[SPEAKER_02]: So everybody, Nina, it's been great picking your brains about email is pre-cleaning.
17:47.158 --> 17:49.620
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, listeners, make sure you stay tuned.
17:49.740 --> 17:58.747
[SPEAKER_02]: Right to the end, you don't miss out on Nina's insider tips on email marketing and my suggestions for more free resources to help you improve things even further in your business.
18:00.674 --> 18:04.875
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, Nina, so far we've gone deep into email list pre-cleaning.
18:05.415 --> 18:09.156
[SPEAKER_02]: And now you get to ours with your insider knowledge about the whole of email marketing.
18:09.196 --> 18:16.498
[SPEAKER_02]: So for the following questions, your answer can be anything to do with email marketing, which of course does include everything we've already been talking about.
18:16.558 --> 18:17.358
[SPEAKER_02]: Nina, are you ready?
18:17.958 --> 18:18.318
[SPEAKER_02]: I am.
18:18.938 --> 18:21.039
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, let's start with newbie advice.
18:21.179 --> 18:26.820
[SPEAKER_02]: If we've inspired someone to take their first step, what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
18:27.780 --> 18:30.602
[SPEAKER_01]: It's started by shifting the way you think about your email list.
18:31.283 --> 18:33.264
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't treat it as a number to grow.
18:33.704 --> 18:36.626
[SPEAKER_01]: You should treat it as an audience you're responsible for.
18:37.247 --> 18:43.891
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you optimize subject lines, designs, automations, make sure you're a sentence to people who generally want to hear from you.
18:44.672 --> 18:52.297
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a healthy list makes every other optimization move, meaningful, and your measuring real engagement, not just noise.
18:53.533 --> 18:54.313
[SPEAKER_02]: nice like it.
18:54.453 --> 19:00.456
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay once you've started of course you've got to keep optimizing so what's your favorite way to improve performance.
19:01.196 --> 19:05.838
[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite way to keep optimizing is automate in whatever you can.
19:06.199 --> 19:20.385
[SPEAKER_01]: So in this case you want to automate the way contacts enter your email list by adding double opting by adding recapture and preventing bots and typos from getting to your list in the first place.
19:21.305 --> 19:25.189
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second step would be set and up an automated ring engagement workflow.
19:25.750 --> 19:35.059
[SPEAKER_01]: It serves both to rekindle relationship with dormant subscribers and also clean your list by removing those who lost interest in your brand.
19:35.639 --> 19:40.904
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think about it, doesn't gauge subscribers are an very early warning,
19:41.765 --> 19:52.375
[SPEAKER_01]: sign that you should pay attention to and if you notice that that segment is growing it's usually telling you something about your email program before your overall performance drops.
19:53.196 --> 19:53.977
[SPEAKER_02]: Nicely put.
19:54.097 --> 19:59.222
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if someone this thing wants to learn more, is there one cheap or free resource you would recommend?
20:00.282 --> 20:05.203
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, I'd like to recommend subscribing to keep optimizing podcasts.
20:05.744 --> 20:06.604
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thank you.
20:07.224 --> 20:08.704
[SPEAKER_01]: It's quite a treasure trove.
20:08.764 --> 20:09.365
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a fan.
20:10.085 --> 20:12.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, of course, Google's postmaster tools.
20:12.926 --> 20:17.187
[SPEAKER_01]: It's absolutely free, and it helps you understand how Gmail sees your sender reputation.
20:18.227 --> 20:22.951
[SPEAKER_01]: And number three is the email quality checker by Getset Control.
20:23.731 --> 20:38.042
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a free tool that helps you upload up to 50,000 contacts and analyze the quality of your list by identifying risky addresses without using SMTP verification.
20:38.603 --> 20:44.807
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, you'll have a list of addresses that seem to be disposable,
20:45.748 --> 20:50.071
[SPEAKER_01]: throw away masked relay, mistype domains, invalid domains.
20:50.371 --> 20:53.794
[SPEAKER_01]: So the context that you don't really want to have on your list.
20:54.715 --> 20:56.376
[SPEAKER_02]: Top, top, top tips there.
20:56.416 --> 20:59.598
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'd almost forgotten about Google postmaster tools as well.
20:59.678 --> 21:03.161
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm clearly going to be logging into that straight after this.
21:03.181 --> 21:05.082
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a checkup on us.
21:06.323 --> 21:08.785
[SPEAKER_02]: Finally, Nina, a crystal ball time.
21:08.865 --> 21:11.567
[SPEAKER_02]: What's coming up in the next six to 12 months that we should be
21:13.475 --> 21:27.776
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're moving toward a world where mailbox providers will start carrying more about engagement signals, of course, is always mattered, but I think it's going to become an even stronger predictor of.
21:28.837 --> 21:43.750
[SPEAKER_01]: you are a center reputation and that means marketers will need to spend less time asking how I can reach more people and start asking questions like who should receive these campaign and how exactly can I encourage engagement.
21:44.745 --> 21:45.365
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you're right.
21:45.385 --> 21:49.547
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's the trajectory we've been on for a while and I completely agree.
21:49.687 --> 21:57.230
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're going to get, it's going to become ever more important to be tidying up that back end of the list and the front end of the list as well as you've outlined.
21:57.250 --> 22:00.212
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, thank you so much for coming on the show.
22:00.252 --> 22:01.292
[SPEAKER_02]: We're nearly at the end.
22:01.792 --> 22:05.374
[SPEAKER_02]: So could you please let the listeners know where they can find you and your business?
22:06.328 --> 22:10.312
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you'd like to connect, I'm happy to connect over on LinkedIn.
22:10.732 --> 22:12.053
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Nina Delacruz.
22:12.874 --> 22:20.741
[SPEAKER_01]: And if today's conversation made you curious about the health of your email list, at Gatsai Control, we've built a free email quality checker.
22:21.382 --> 22:31.591
[SPEAKER_01]: You can upload your list and quickly spot things like disposable email addresses, roll-based inboxes, relay email addresses, and other potential risky
22:32.412 --> 22:32.992
[SPEAKER_01]: addresses.
22:33.673 --> 22:39.475
[SPEAKER_01]: It also assigns quality squares to all contacts so you can build segments based on the potential value.
22:39.575 --> 22:44.758
[SPEAKER_01]: It's totally free and it's an easy way to understand where your database actually looks like.
22:45.798 --> 22:46.759
[SPEAKER_02]: Nina, that's awesome.
22:46.799 --> 22:49.280
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much being on the key optimizing podcast.
22:49.300 --> 22:54.323
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm for so clearly explaining such an important part of our email marketing mix to us.
22:54.463 --> 22:55.543
[SPEAKER_02]: Really appreciate it.
22:55.583 --> 22:56.183
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Nina.
22:56.864 --> 22:58.084
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Cloy.
22:58.184 --> 22:59.525
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a pleasure talking to
23:03.554 --> 23:27.054
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you aren't already keeping your list tidy, both in terms of measuring the engagement levels within your list and doing those external cleaning tasks, which I highly, highly recommend, should be a part of your usual email activity, then it's time to do it because it could, so if something goes wrong, it could affect
23:27.294 --> 23:39.264
[SPEAKER_02]: the deliverability of all your emails, but also it's increasingly important to keep your emails effective, the deliverability good, getting into the inbox, getting the response rates you want and everything else.
23:39.925 --> 23:45.870
[SPEAKER_02]: You can get the links to the things we discussed, the full transcript of the episode, our notes are more at keepoptimizing.com.
23:46.370 --> 23:49.033
[SPEAKER_02]: You can also use our special direct episode short links.
23:49.513 --> 23:56.556
[SPEAKER_02]: just put keepopt.com forward slash the number of the episode into the URL bar and you will go straight to the right page of the site.
23:56.957 --> 24:02.399
[SPEAKER_02]: When you get there why not add yourself to our email list and grab our latest ebook whilst you're doing it.
24:02.519 --> 24:03.740
[SPEAKER_02]: Go on, you know you want to.
24:04.660 --> 24:08.823
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Keep Optimizing podcast.
24:09.604 --> 24:19.692
[SPEAKER_02]: If you've enjoyed this episode, then check out episode 227, the little while ago, where we get deep into privacy strategies with Savorn Solberg,
24:20.292 --> 24:30.661
[SPEAKER_02]: because I think in some in many ways it builds on this it's all about list quality and clarity with your audience but through the lens of good legal privacy strategies as well.
24:31.181 --> 24:34.904
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot easier listening than it than I've made it sound but I think you'll like that one.
24:35.344 --> 24:43.011
[SPEAKER_02]: You could also find our full thread of email marketing content by scrolling up your feed or using the short link keep up dot com forward slash email.
24:43.591 --> 24:51.015
[SPEAKER_02]: Please do tell your fellow marketers about the show because I want to help as many marketers as possible to improve the performance of their e-commerce marketing.
24:51.535 --> 24:57.479
[SPEAKER_02]: Have a great week and make sure you listen to the next episode so I can help you to keep optimizing your marketing.
