Taking a deeper look at the contacts

The #1 rule of email marketing is to get permission to email first. Can you legally purchase a list? Yes. But it is not going to give you good results. These contacts do not know you and likely will not want your email, prompting them to delete / mark as spam, and negatively impacting your server reputation.

Let’s take a look at the following to troubleshoot with contacts.

Where do your contacts come from?

• Are these contacts Opted In using a form on their website or some other lead gen system? (Good)
• Are these contacts from a list that they have been sending to in the past? (still good)
• Are these contacts from a 3rd party / purchased list, not opted in? (Bad)

Look at the contacts in the list, do they look like valid/legitimate email addresses?

• Addresses like accounting@, Sales@, info@ are not good to send marketing emails to.
• Obviously fake addresses (e.g [e-mail]) are also not good to keep.
  
  

Have those contacts bounced from another platform?

• Some folks hop from one platform to another with bad lists. If contacts bounced when you emailed them from another email marketing system, they will bounce with us too.

Safe Sending means only sending to people who have Opted In to get your emails. Sending to people who have not agreed to receive them is, by definition, spamming. It also means including opt-out options in your emails (these are included automatically in your Elevate emails).

Expectations to educate the client

• If you are sending to lists of people who Opted In, your engagement and deliverability rates will be higher overall.
• If you send to lists of leads that have not opted in / were purchased from a 3rd party, your engagement and deliverability rates will be noticeably lower.
• Emailing contacts who do not know you will equal lower open rates, higher deletion rates, and higher instances of being marked as spam. All three of these work against your online reputation.
• Our system will clean up bounced / unsubscribed contacts for you, but it is good to clear out as many as possible before sending emails to them.

Best practices to follow

• Make sure your contacts / leads are all opted in
• Avoid purchased / acquired 3rd party lists
• Avoid sending unsolicited emails
• If sending to a 3rd party list, first send a text-only email with a link ASKING them to opt in.