Email List Cleaner

Every email marketing campaign involves a marketer who builds an email list and has aspirations of being able to keep in touch with active and engaged subscribers who are passionate about their brand. Unfortunately, many can run into issues with the many bots and fake email addresses that can sign up when you don’t use the appropriate email verification tools. 

If you’ve had those struggles, you’ve probably heard that an email list cleaner could help. However, that typically leads to many other questions. What is an email list cleaner? Is there a free email list cleaner? Which option will be best for my marketing needs? 

This article will break everything down in detail with what you should know about email list cleaning solutions and email address verification tools. By the end, you’ll know which steps to take to get your email marketing strategy back on track. 

What Does It Mean To Clean An Email List?

Cleaning an email list means narrowing your list of subscribers down to those who are real, active, and engaged with your content. To identify valid email addresses properly, you’d want to remove any subscribers that:

• Are no longer engaging with your content and can’t be re-engaged
• Are identified as fake or spam email addresses (causing email bounces) 
• Have dormant email addresses where they’ve never engaged with content
• Are duplicate email addresses

Removing these types of email addresses from your list will significantly improve your engagement and deliverability rates. 

This is important since too many email bounces or landing in spam folders too often can significantly hurt engagement. It can even lead to your active subscribers not receiving content from you if inbox providers identify your domain as potential spam. 

How Can I Clean Up My Email List Inbox with an Email Verification Service?

The best way to clean up your email list is by using an email list cleaner or email list cleaning tool. You can often find an email list cleaner online or a specific email list cleaner software that will help. 

An email list cleaner is the most effective option for busy marketers and business owners since it helps identify emails that should be removed from your list in seconds or minutes. 

It’s a much more effective use of your time than trying to run DNS records, check for misspelled syntaxes, or do IP address lookups manually. Those can be very tedious and technical processes to try on your own. Instead, the list cleaner software handles all of that automatically in the background. 

Why Is It Important To Clean Your Email List?

When investing in email list cleaning services or software, you probably want to know why it’s important. 

As touched on briefly before, regardless of which email service providers you use, cleaning your list is important for email deliverability. You want to prevent bounces as much as possible because they hurt your engagement rates and trust scores with inbox providers. Too many bounces can even lead to inbox providers automatically sending your content to the spam folder. Here are some other areas it can help with:

• Improve your placement: A clean and engaged email list will improve your placement rates. Improved placement rates prevent you from landing in the spam folder and can also help you land in the primary inbox rather than sub-folders like “social” or “promotional” on Gmail that get much less engagement. 
• Avoid spam complaints: When a subscriber isn’t engaging with your content, it sets you up for a higher chance that they report you as spam at some point. Many often do this if they can’t figure out how to unsubscribe. So removing any subscribers you can’t re-engage is a good idea. 
• Get better data: An underrated aspect of cleaning your email list is you get more accurate data about your most engaged audience. It’ll help you plan better email marketing strategies that target your most loyal customers’ needs. 
• Decrease expenses (in some cases): Many popular email platforms like Mailchimp and ConvertKit calculate monthly costs to use their platform based on how big your list of subscribers is. Narrowing down your list could help you save a bit of money in some instances. 

Overall, there are many great reasons why you should clean your email list and keep it up to date over the long term. 

How Do Email List Cleaners Work?

As mentioned earlier, email list cleaners work by handling many automated processes in the background to help you identify subscribers who should be removed or suppressed. Some of those processes include:

• Running DNS records
• Performing IP address checks
• Checking for common spam words
• Checking for syntax misspellings
• Pinging servers for activity

You can perform many of these tasks manually. However, there’s a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to do things like IP address checks or server pings. Plus, you usually have to do those checks one by one. If you have a list of thousands of subscribers, it’s not feasible for serious email marketers to do manual checks, so having software do it for you is the better route. 

If you’re looking for a solution, our insight software at AudiencePoint can help. Our insight software provides a unique solution because it continuously monitors subscriber activity. That way, you can always stay on top of when subscribers need to be re-engaged or should be suppressed from your campaigns. 

How Do You Maintain Email List Hygiene with Email List Cleaning Services?

Other than using an email list cleaner, there are additional ways you can maintain good email list hygiene to keep it clean for the long term. Many of these are also best practices to help you generate the most revenue and customer retention from your email marketing strategy. 

• Do an initial email confirmation: One of the best ways to build a clean email list from the get-go is an initial email confirmation. It sends a code or button to the new subscribers’ listed email address that they have to input or press before being added to the list. It helps ensure you only add real subscribers with active inboxes. 
• Continuously monitor engagement metrics: To get the most benefit from email marketing, you want to always stay on top of your engagement metrics to ensure you’re reaching customers correctly. Our insight software at AudiencePoint can keep you up-to-date on your latest engagement metrics in real-time. 
• Send at the right time: A great strategy to boost engagement is sending emails when your subscribers are most likely to check their inbox. It helps set you up for success since you’ll appear higher up on their list of most recent emails. AudiencePoint can also help with that through our Send Time Optimization tool. 
• Offer valuable content: To keep your list engaged and avoid spam traps, you should always ensure you offer valuable content to your audience. Think about what your subscribers would like to learn and how you can make the content more engaging while designing it. You’ll reap the rewards from taking those extra steps in the long term. 

As you can see, there are many great ways to maintain a clean and engaged email list. If you need extra assistance, our insight software at AudiencePoint can provide you with all the actionable data you need to make informed choices for your email marketing strategy. 

Is There a Quick Way to Clean Up Emails? Can an Email List Cleaning Service Help?

If you have an established email list that needs to be cleaned, one of the best ways to do so is by using a bulk email list cleaner. Bulk list cleaners are very effective because they can run several checks quickly to give you results in seconds or minutes about which subscribers need to be removed to improve deliverability. 

If you have an established email list and need more insights, AudiencePoint can help. We use a combination of second-party data that accounts for 90% of U.S. consumers, and our tool ListFit provides accurate data about how your audience engages to give you great results. 

We’ve helped several companies suppress dormant emails to improve deliverability, and we know our insight software can help with all your needs, too. 

How Often Should You Clean Email Lists?

Most email marketing experts recommend you clean your email list at least once a month. It’s estimated that email data can degrade at around 22% each year. As people change jobs or switch email addresses, you can end up with more dormant emails on your list over time. 

Better yet, using insight software like AudiencePoint that can continuously stay on top of subscriber activity and help you accurately clean your list on an ongoing basis will provide even better results. That way, you’ll always know your list of subscribers is up-to-date for more confident sending during your campaigns. 

How Much Does It Cost to Clean an Email List?

Most paid email list cleaners you’ll find online will cost anywhere from $10 to $150 each time you check your email list dependent upon it’s size. You may also have to pay more than that if you have an extensive email list (over 10,000 subscribers). You get what you pay for, so investing in premium solutions is usually the best bet for serious email marketers. 

Can You Use an Email List Cleaner for Free to Remove Invalid Email Addresses? 

Some services allow you to verify an email list for free. However, these options often require you to check emails one at a time, which is very tedious when you have a large list. And the best free email list cleaners aren’t as accurate as paid options that verify your subscribers through several detailed checks. 

You’re much better off going with a more premium solution like our insight software at AudiencePoint, which uses additional checks through second-party data and accurate metrics that many other list cleaners don’t offer. 

How AudiencePoint Can Help with Email Verification Services

AudiencePoint offers an email insight software that can help you improve engagement and deliverability for your email marketing campaigns. Our solution works by using three tools called: Real Time Optimization, Send Time Optimization, and ListFit. 

When you use our tools, they’ll give you continuous insights about how you can improve your campaigns in real-time. It is very actionable advice that you can easily implement into your existing strategy. It saves you a lot of hassle rather than pouring hours into analyzing all the metrics yourself. 

If AudiencePoint seems to solve your needs, contact us today to learn more.