This past week, I had some dental work done.
It was painful and it was expensive but I could not put it off any longer. It had to be done.
The day after the procedure, I had the craziest lopsided smile. It was too painful to fully pull the one side of my mouth up at the corner.
My kids thought it was hilarious but inside, I was worried the pain would never go away.
A few days after that, the pain in my tooth was still fairly bad. Determined to figure out why it wasn’t getting better I finally attacked the problem with the tools I knew how to use. Dental floss and mouth wash.
My apologies if dental work conversations make you nauseous. I’m almost getting to my point.
So, I worked on it and the tooth turned a corner. It had just needed some extra attention. It needed a deep clean. (I’m not going into the goings on…but know, stuff happened in that bathroom session LOL)
And now the throbbing is subsiding and the healing is taking over.
The tooth will live to chew another day.
I’ve had A LOT of conversations about List Health this month. Like way more than I’ve had during most months.
The age-old debate about cleaning vs not-cleaning your list is swirling around me.
You might have guessed by now that I live firmly entrenched in the Cleaning Camp.
A list full of subscribers who are clogging up your open and click rates is a list that will underperform for you over and over again.
Imagine you have a store full of people. Some are there to buy. Some are there to browse and some are just there because they saw a sign that said you were giving out free samples.
Those that are there for the free samples are plentiful. They’re clogging up the clear path to the checkout counter. If a lot of them left, you’d have room to talk and sell to those that are really interested. More room in the store for your interested clients to browse.
That’s how I imagine my list. It’s my storefront and I don’t want it congested with customers who aren’t there to buy. I don’t want to pay for someone to be on my list who isn’t buying, nor do I want to spend all of my time convincing them to do so.
And yes, in the future, that may change for that reader, but I’m looking at my bottom line now. If in 6 months they haven’t opened an email, then nothing I do is going to change that. I’d rather spend my time and money on new readers who just joined my list.
Every three months I run a deep clean of my list. Here’s how I do it.
- Run a report on those who have clicked on an email in that quarter.
- Create a segment of those who haven’t clicked and give them a label.
- Export them to a csv file for safe keeping.
- Remove them from my list and watch my deliverability climb.
Want to learn more about deliverability and list health? Sign up below to download my free deliverability checklist.
Holly
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