The email marketing landscape is changing rapidly, and what worked years ago may not work today. ISPs now consider a variety of factors to decide if our emails reach their customers. As such, we must continuously strategize new initiatives to remain successful in this ever-evolving ecosystem.
All ISPs strive to protect customers from spam and unwanted mail. At the same time, marketers must ensure that their marketing emails are not misinterpreted as SPAM in order to prioritize their campaigns accordingly.
With this in mind, we all know it is critical to constantly inspect and sanitize your email list with a reliable email verification and hygiene system. Establishing and sustaining excellent email hygiene habits are essential for the future prosperity of not just your marketing endeavors but also for achieving optimal deliverability rates.
Yet, have you considered that email activity data as a further way to refine your list health?
What is Email Activity Data?
No matter how carefully you've built your email list over time, thoroughly verified the addresses with hygiene services, and sent out emails that meet the expectations of subscribers - some contacts still don't engage. That's where Email Activity Data Intelligence comes into play. Webbula has coined the term "Email Activity Data" to refer to this kind of data, although other vendors may have different terminology. For the sake of this article, “Email Activity Data” will be used generically.
Visualize a technology that can tell you if the email address has interacted with other senders’ emails. This way, you'll be able to distinguish between inactive users and those who simply don't find your content intriguing.
An ideal solution is available through email activity data intelligence.
Email activity data can be broken out in three different ways:
1. First Seen Activity
You can use this data to discover emails which were first spotted within the last 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, 1 year or more than a year.
2. Activity Trajectory
You can use this data to understand what these emails have done in the last few weeks. These emails have shown a stark shift from diminished activity to rapid growth.
3. Most Recent Activity
Through these emails, you can be up-to-date with the recent activity that has occurred in the past month to over a year ago. Get insights from your data within 30 days, 90 days, 6 months or even one year back!
How can you improve email campaign performance with email activity data?
Finding the perfect answer to this question isn't an easy task; it all depends on what you're trying to achieve. Therefore, let's explore a few possible scenarios where email activity data can be utilized:
1. Email Service Providers (ESPs): Email Service Providers are the essential link between marketers and their customers. To ensure success for themselves and their clients, they must guarantee that email marketing best practices are followed strictly - from only sending emails to those interested in receiving them to guaranteeing account security.
Despite their best efforts, ESPs understand that bad email addresses are unavoidable and can cause immense damage to the user experience. So what do they suggest when a customer approaches them with an extensive list of invalid emails?
Through the assessment of email behavior, ESPs can gain meaningful insights into which potential customers are likely to be low or high risk. Even though they cannot simply reject everyone, this tool aids them in distinguishing between different types of senders and educating new clients about proper email marketing practices for both their own safety as well as that of the ESP.
2, Consultants & Agencies: These individuals are employed to take on an immense responsibility. It is expected of them to demonstrate their worth and capability in the area of email. Yet, they lack the knowledge to identify potential threats within emails, as well as not being familiar with the nuances of email quality like a verification service professional or deliverability specialist would know.
Email activity data can be a great metric to demonstrate the effectiveness of email marketing. It provides valuable insight into your customers' behavior and preferences, helping you optimize your campaigns for maximum impact!
3. Marketers: These professionals understand the importance of resources and goal setting, however it is simply not fair to expect high conversion rates from a disengaged and inactive list.
With Email activity data, you can take your list cleaning services to the next level. While it may appear that having a long contact list is beneficial, this isn't always accurate. It's actually wiser to remove inactive individuals from your mailings who don’t check their emails in Gmail or Outlook inboxes. By doing so, you'll be able to focus on building an audience of people who are intrigued by and engaged with what you have available for them.
Not only is it beneficial for list segmentation and re-engagement (win-back) campaigns, but this tool also provides invaluable assistance in setting up those same campaigns from the start.
By leveraging the power of this data, you can separate your mailers into two distinct groups - Group A being those that yield the most success and Group B containing those with less active engagement. This is paramount to mitigating risk: these lower velocity email addresses can damage your overall performance metrics if left unattended.
To gain a deeper insight into your unknown email addresses, analyze the overall activity on your emails. After verifying and cleaning up your list with a quality provider, use this extra layer to identify if those contacts are truly engaged or not.
Conclusion
You may be asking yourself, “What advantages does this offer compared to a typical list cleaning service? Should I be using one or the other...or both?” The answer is dependent on your unique needs. There are two distinct solutions available, and it all comes down to which will work best for you.
If you want to minimize your risk and ensure that spam traps and bounces don't impede you, an email hygiene solution is a must!
If you have plenty of activity but still can't seem to get your emails delivered, it's time to investigate email activity data. You should also consider if there is any way for you to add an extra layer on top of that existing activity.
Are you yet to witness a substantial amount of engagement after keeping your email list spick and span?
Email activity data may be the answer to all your email woes.