Is Your Email List Healthy? Here’s How to Find Out

Email list health is the number one indicator of whether recipients will see your emails and engage with them. But is your email list healthy? We show you how to know for sure – and what to do to rehabilitate an email list that needs improving. 

One thing is for sure: With email being the number one marketing channel and most people getting at least 100 emails daily, the inbox competition is tremendous. It’s not just emails from competitors that you’re vying for attention with. It’s messages from unrelated brands, notifications, and even family and friends.

In an already competitive field, an unhealthy email list can knock you out of the game before you even begin. And an unhealthy list is the number one reason emails won’t even reach your subscribers’ inboxes. Instead, they’ll land in the spam folder or won’t be delivered at all. 

Unhealthy email lists lead to low engagement, high bounce rates, and a diminishing ROI. Your email marketing can never reach its full potential if your email list isn’t healthy.

We’ll be taking a look at how to determine if your email list is healthy and what you need to do to rehabilitate an unfit list. Assessing and improving your email list health is an ongoing process, and we’ll show you how to do both.

Why your email list health matters

Your email list health has the biggest bearing on your email deliverability. 

Email deliverability is the rate at which your emails go to the inbox. It’s different from email delivery which measures if an email goes anywhere: including the spam folder. 

• To get real results in email marketing, deliverability is what counts as that can lead to more engagement. 
• It also improves your sender reputation, which is the way ISPs determine who is a legitimate email sender and who is a spammer. 

All of these good metrics rely on a healthy list.

On the other side of the coin, a dirty email list yields all of the catastrophes that can happen in email marketing: 

• Being marked as spam, which is terrible for your sender reputation
• Poor or nonexistent conversion rates
• Dwindling results from your email campaigns.

If you want your great emails to make it to the inbox, you simply can’t ignore the health of your email list. You’ll find out in short order why competent email marketers are concerned with keeping the email list as clean as possible.

Signs your email list might be unhealthy

Like cavities that pile up from ignoring the dentist, email list health can deteriorate before you know it. Sometimes, things take a turn for the worst and the situation becomes volatile quickly. 

If you observe any of the following, you may have a problem with your email list health:

• Low open rates: When virtually nobody is opening your emails, it indicates that many aren’t seeing them. Although fine-tuning subject lines can affect open rates, if your open rates are dwindling, it could mean there’s a problem with list health.
• High bounce rates: Getting bounces is a big no-no. The accepted industry benchmark is no more than 2%. Even getting more than two bounces per 100 emails means you should look into your email list health. Things may be worse than you imagined. 
• Unsubscribes: Getting unsubscribes is good and you should process those as quickly as possible. However, if you get a massive number of unsubscribes, it can indicate that you’re doing something wrong. 
• Spam complaints: They indicate that people see your emails as junk. If you’re getting lots of spam reports, you must examine your entire email marketing program and email list immediately. 
• Lack of engagement: Healthy engagement rates show your database is fresh. The best thing is clicking, but any engagement is a good indicator of a healthy list: replying, forwarding, and even the occasional unsubscribe. Low engagement can be a sign of poor email list health.

Virtually anything negative that can happen in email marketing can be tied to the quality of your list. But how can you quickly find out if your email list is healthy?

Use an email list evaluator

If you’re not quite ready to take a close look at your database, you can get an evaluation and see if there are any health issues. ZeroBounce’s free email list evaluator takes only minutes to scan your contacts and let you know how many of them are obsolete or fake. 

What’s more, you can do this for free. Just upload your email list here.

If you see an issue, consider verifying all the email addresses and removing the ones that may affect your inbox placement.

What you can do to improve your email list health

If your email list is dirty, you need to clean it and help your email campaigns go to people’s inboxes. But you can also do some things to keep your list from decaying.

Practice regular email validation 

No less than quarterly, consider running your email list through an email verifier to identify fake or inactive email addresses. That way, you avoid bounces, protect your sender reputation, and stay off email blacklists.

Check all new sign-ups

You wouldn’t want to clean your list and then have damaging emails seep right back into your it via your sign-up forms. Your email verification provider should also give you access to an email validation API, which is a real-time checker for all of your new email sign-ups.

Remove inactive subscribers 

One of the best things you can do is maintain a strong standard for your subscribers.  If someone isn’t regularly engaging with your emails, remove them from your list. Don’t have those people on your list just to have them. The quality of your list matters far more than the number of subscribers. 

Segment your audience

Anything you can do to boost engagement is a win and helps keep your email list healthy. Segment your list based on your audience preferences, gender, location, or past purchase behavior. 

Use double opt-in

Double opt-in improves your list quality by requiring anyone who signs up to exert a little effort to subscribe. After someone signs up, an automated email with a unique link is generated. If the person clicks the link, they are admitted onto your list. Using double opt-in helps you build an email list of people who truly care about you. Half-hearted subscribers are counterproductive.

Strategies to elevate your email list health

There are some things you can do to elevate your email list health. Follow these good habits below to see better results from your campaigns.

Regular list hygiene practices

Just as you regularly get your automobile maintained or go to the doctor, you should set a schedule for your email validation. Also, make sure that all of your online forms that can accept an email address and that your email validation API is in working order.

Send relevant, targeted content

Strive to keep subscribers engaged with the right content. If it doesn’t resonate with your audience, your email list health can be in jeopardy as people will stop engaging or start to mark you as spam.

Try re-engagement campaigns

If you aren’t ready to part with your unengaged subscribers, you can always try to get those subscribers back in the fold. Some email marketers find that the best tactic is to simply level with unengaged subscribers. It can work – you just acknowledge that they haven’t opened your emails, and that’s okay. It gives them an option to begin opening them, but if they don’t, you can remove them.

Keep an eye on deliverability

It pays to be proactive about the number of emails that land in your prospects’ inboxes. First, check your email marketing reports – how are your metrics? If you notice them dropping suddenly, it may be time for an email list cleaning. 

This simple habit will go a long way in helping you maintain your email list and continue to enjoy good results from your email campaigns. 

The health of your email list matters as much as the quality of emails you send

With bounces and spam complaints playing such a significant role in your email deliverability, the health of your email list is top priority. So don’t think of it as an afterthought. Instead, look at it as something that is on equal footing to creating great copy and design. 

Ask yourself: can a person be too healthy? That’s the right attitude to have with your list. The more vibrant you keep it, the happier you’ll be with your email marketing performance.