Email List Optimization is about maximizing the longevity of engagement with your email list so that you add value to their life while becoming a trusted authority so that people want to do business with you.

Maximizing email engagement works because:

Did you know that since the pandemic, email volume has doubled?

People’s email inboxes are overcrowded with more businesses competing for their precious attention than ever before. 

Attention spans are also shorter, meaning if you don’t keep your contacts engaged, they may stay on your list, but you may never have their attention again.

For these reasons plus due to Google’s and Yahoo's new requirements, it has never been more important to recognize the signs of when your contacts are about to stop paying attention, so you can win them back before they’re lost forever.

Introducing…

The Email List Optimization 3-Step Process Make More Money for Longer from Your Existing Email List

Think of Email List Optimization as a three-sided triangle. Each side plays an important role, but it’s strongest when they lean on one another.

For best results, Email List Optimization needs to be performed in a specific order so each step builds on the previous one to build a strong foundation.

1. Insights

Insights answer the question, “What’s really happening with your list?”

We answer this question by following these steps:

• Assess

• Diagnose

• Game Plan

Using our proprietary Deliverability Dashboard app suite (Authenticator Checker, Smart Score, Smart Stats, Smart Defender, and Google’s Postmaster), we collect data to assess how your list is performing. Once we have data, we can diagnose any issues or engagement leaks and design a game plan to fix them.

2. Trusted Sender

Becoming a Trusted Sender answers the question, “Are people seeing your emails?”

As a marketing channel, email is unique. Inbox Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail are bombarded by massive amounts of spam so they have to be extremely strict about which senders they accept emails from. 

Since ISPs don’t approve emails beforehand plus provide little feedback about delivery status (which is deliberate to avoid spammers gaming the system), the only way to consistently get your emails into your contact’s inbox is to NOT look like a spammer and don’t send emails people don’t want to see.

The steps to becoming a Trusted Sender are:

• Assess

• Repair

• Implement

• Automate

Based on your assessment, we can make necessary repairs to improve your sending reputation and implement new processes to maintain it. Our Smart Defender app automates the list management process to save you time and effort.

For many businesses, just focusing on these first two components of Email List Optimization can dramatically improve results.

*Caveat: Remember this series is for businesses that are doing well with their email but don’t realize they could be doing better. If you have major reputation issues which are impacting your sends, you may need a complete rehab.

3. Engagement Optimization

Engagement Optimization answers the question, “Are you tapping into your list’s full sales potential?”

NEWS FLASH: MOST BUSINESSES AREN’T!

Once you know what’s happening with your list, and you’re confident people are seeing your emails, it’s time to turn your attention to list optimization.

Engagement Optimization involves advanced strategies for identifying and plugging engagement leaks in your email marketing processes. 

If you have more people’s attention for longer, plus have great offers that solve a person’s problem at a price they’re willing to pay… you’re going to make more sales.

Engagement Optimization includes:

• Contact’s Journey

• Engagement Leaks

• List Simulator

Contact’s Journey is recognizing that just because someone is on your email list doesn’t mean they’re a warm lead. The old advice of “email them until they buy or die” no longer works in 2024. 

We consistently see businesses with ice cold leads on their list… but continue to send them the same old emails… which they haven’t responded to in months… hoping the result will be different this time.

Mastering Contact’s Journey involves recognizing when the temperature of your leads change and triggering the right message at the right time to warm them back up.

We have developed a unique metric called Point of No Return.  This is one of our advanced assessments included in Smart Stats for determining your list’s precise window for re-engaging a prospect before they’re lost forever.  We will dedicate an entire post towards this powerful metric later in the series.

Engagement Leaks

Think of your email list’s attention as a bucket with 100 holes. You fill it up but over time you will have less and less.

The reality is no email list maintains complete attention of all of their contacts forever.

There’s going to be people on your email list who won’t need you anymore.    Perhaps they solved their problem, found a different solution, faced a challenge that halted their progress or maybe got interested in a different topic.

Whatever the reason it’s not possible to plug every hole in this leaky bucket. 

But what if you could easily fix 20% of them… or maybe even half of them… and because attention equals sales… the better you are at keeping your list’s attention for longer the more money you will make.  

List Simulator (powered by Smart Defender)

We know change is scary. You’ve worked hard and spent good money to acquire leads, so it’s painful to accept that “they maybe just aren’t that into you anymore.” 

We developed the List Simulator process because sometimes you just need to see it… with your own eyes… on your own list… before you believe it’s true. Now there’s a no risk way to test a new email list strategy before you fully adopt it.

Case Study

Despite sending 2 emails per week for 6 months without opening a single email, it was challenging for this business to acknowledge these leads were ice cold. 

Using Smart Defender, we ran a “List Simulator” test by segmenting a regular newsletter broadcast by engagement. 

Here are the results:

Did you notice the dramatic drop-off between segments?

There’s even a huge drop-off between the 7-Day Engaged Audience and the 7-30 Day Engaged Audience. 

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) greatly inflates open rates but only if the email arrives in the contacts Inbox (if the email lands in the spam folder MPP doesn’t mark it as open) 

With a 6.68% open rate for the 30+ Day segment I highly doubt most of these emails are even making it to the inbox. If they were, I would expect a much higher open rate from MPP alone.

So it begs the question…

If we’re not sure emails are even making it to our cold lead’s Inbox, how likely is it you can win them back by sending more emails?

We also used Smart Defender to look at the engagement of customers during a recent promotion.

Summary:

Are you starting to see how important recent engagement is?

We’ve covered a lot today. Remember, we’ll be diving deeper into this whole process throughout this series.  Our next post will be about your Smart Stats reports - what  to look at first and what it means for your business.

Next Steps

• Sign up for the EmailSmart Score to see how your email list is performing (it’s 100% free)
• Discover how Smart Defender can save you time and effort

If you’re looking for specific feedback on how to make improvements with your email list, here are some of the ways we can help:

If you’ve missed any of the EMAIL LIST OPTIMIZATION series, here’s where you can catch up:

• BLOG POST 1: Why Businesses Love Email

• BLOG POST 2: The Problem 90% of Online Businesses Don’t Realize They Have that’s Costing You Sales