Understanding Email Lists
An email list is a curated collection of email addresses, utilized by businesses and individuals to disseminate messages, newsletters, updates, and promotional content to a specific audience. It's a powerful tool for email marketing, enabling the delivery of personalized and targeted communications to subscribers who have chosen to receive such information.
When sending mass emails, contacts have to be subscribed to an email list. When creating an email list, you must supply the list name (internal), the website/domain (your website), and the list description.
To create an email list, you can visit Lists Overview.
Important: The list URL should be your company’s domain. If email recipients mark emails as spam/unsubscribe your domain reputation can be flagged. A bad domain reputation can damage email deliverability and can hurt website rankings. We recommend only mass emailing people who are active customers. Mass emailing should not be used in prospecting sequences/automations.
Advantages of Using an Email List
Leveraging an email list provides a plethora of benefits for both marketing and sales teams. It empowers businesses and individuals to:
Swiftly and effortlessly reach a broad audience.
Precisely target groups based on their interests, demographics, and behavior.
Dispatch personalized and pertinent messages to subscribers.
Foster relationships with subscribers and customers.
Amplify website traffic and escalate sales.
Building an Email List: A Guide
To construct an email list, consider these initial steps:
Implement a sign-up form on your website or social media channels to gather email addresses from interested parties.
Propose incentives like exclusive content, discounts, or giveaways to stimulate sign-ups.
Utilize social media platforms to publicize your email list and attract more subscribers.
Host events and collect email addresses from participants.
Broaden your reach by partnering with other businesses or individuals in your niche and exchanging email lists.
Exploring Different Types of Email Lists
Depending on your business objectives and target audience, you can create various types of email lists. Here are some examples:
Prospect lists: These encompass potential customers who have expressed interest in your business but haven't yet made a purchase. They're typically cultivated from website opt-ins, social media followers, event attendees, and other lead-generation initiatives.
Customer lists: These contain existing customers who have previously purchased from your business. Customer email lists are frequently used for targeted upsell and cross-sell campaigns, as well as to stimulate repeat purchases and enhance customer loyalty.
Newsletter lists: These include individuals who have opted-in to receive regular newsletters or updates from your business. Newsletter email lists are commonly used to disseminate company news, blog articles, and other valuable content.
Promotional lists: These consist of individuals who have chosen to receive promotional messages or special offers from your business. Promotional email lists are often employed to boost sales, advertise new products or services, and announce time-sensitive deals.
Partner lists: These involve individuals or businesses that you've collaborated with for co-marketing endeavors. Partner email lists are frequently leveraged to extend your reach and drive traffic to your website or landing pages.
Event lists: These comprise individuals who have attended your events or shown interest in future ones. Event email lists are typically used to promote upcoming events, share event highlights, and solicit feedback.
Understanding Domain Reputation
Domain reputation refers to the overall status or "health" of your brand's domain as perceived by mailbox providers. This reputation is influenced by several factors including engagement rates, spam complaint rates, encounters with spam traps, and bounce rates.
The Functioning of Domain Reputation
Your domain reputation can be likened to a “credit score.” A high score, resulting from effective email marketing practices, quality data, and strong engagement, leads to more consistent inbox placement and increased visibility for your emails. However, if your domain has a history of negative activities such as spam complaints, low open rates, excessive bounce rates, or spam trap hits, your score decreases. Consequently, you may face challenges like spam folder placement, increased throttling, or even blocks from the mailbox provider.
The Impact of Switching ESPs on Domain Reputation
Switching Email Service Providers (ESPs) or using different sender addresses does not help evade a negative domain reputation. The reputation follows you regardless of changing ESPs and could potentially cause further issues for your email campaigns in the future. It is advisable to invest resources into improving your domain reputation instead.
The Effect of a New Domain on Sender Reputation
While a new domain might temporarily clear your reputation, continuing with the same business practices will only worsen your current sending problems. Using a domain with minimal or no sending history and reputation subjects you to increased filtering. With a new domain, it's crucial to establish a positive sending history and reputation right from the start. Adhering to best practices from the onset simplifies inbox placement when executing campaigns.
Rehabilitation Timeline for Domain Reputation
Improving domain reputation is not an instantaneous process. Depending on the severity of the deliverability issues, resetting reputation can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. The duration required to rebuild your domain reputation is dependent on your negative metrics (spam complaints, hard bounces, low engagement, spam trap hits) and sending history.
A reasonable timeline for enhancing your domain reputation would be approximately 30-45 days. However, this is contingent on the modifications you've made to your business practices and how these changes are perceived by mailbox providers.
Maintaining a Positive Domain Reputation
Given the numerous factors that influence reputation, how can you maintain a positive domain reputation?
Regularly monitor your domain reputation metrics and inbox placement using third-party tools. You can register your company’s domain with Google Search Console to monitor your company’s domain reputation.
Ensure your data remains clean. A tarnished domain reputation can often stem from a high hard bounce rate, indicative of invalid email addresses, sustained over an extended period. The allure of emailing your entire list indiscriminately, without segmentation or a sunsetting protocol to eliminate inactive recipients, may be strong, but it could negatively impact your reputation.
Additionally, it's imperative to establish robust sign-up practices, such as double opt-in, to thwart the infiltration of false and potentially harmful data into your lists, thereby averting future reputation issues. WolfPack CRM offers a tool that facilitates tracking, tagging, and segregating your contacts, empowering you to concentrate on specific segments and formulate an efficient sending strategy.
As time progresses, recipient addresses may transform into spam traps or honeypots, and dispatching emails to these addresses can exacerbate your reputation damage. Possessing quality data enhances your likelihood of reaching a broader recipient base and bolsters engagement.
Stay attentive to your recipient's behavior. Should domain reputation be a concern, vigilance in observing customer interaction with your emails is paramount. Are there indications of an uptick in spam folder placements? Have recent grievances been raised about your email dispatches? Reevaluate your sending practices in light of our Strategies to Reduce Bounce Rate. By making the requisite adjustments to align with these best practices, you can expect a gradual enhancement of your reputation over time.