Question

Topic: E-Marketing

List Hygiene

Posted by Anonymous on 3/7/2008 at 6:15 PM ET 200 Points
My email list is lousy! Almost 20% of the list is bouncing, and my current provider does nothing about it; they won't even give me the bounce list.

Needless to say, I'm moving to a new provider. That provider, however, refuses to send out my mailings until I get the list cleaned. My list is tiny – under 10,000 adresses total. It doesn’t change the percentages, however.

I manage the web site of a wine store that has been in business since 1941 and has had an ecommerce web site since 1999. I have been dealing with the site for less than two years, and have actually been in charge for less than a year. We contract with a company that runs wine websites for the entire back end - we are responsible for the look and feel of the site, and we can add content but not functionality. We've delivered our email using the facilities set up by that company. It is a single opt-in list (no return email required.)

We are now in the process of switching back end providers. They also provide an email system. They are the ones who want me to clean up my list before anything goes out from their server, and I don't blame them. The flip side is that I don’t see a way of cleaning the list, without sending an email through a provider that will give me the bounce list.

To date, we've been sending out just one email a month. The boss wants me to step that up considerably once we move to the new company. I’ll post another question about my plan for that after I get this straightened out.

How do I clean the list?

Is there anyone (any company) that can compare my list with a known list of invalid addresses? Some of the big email companies obviously have lists of bounced emails sent out by their bigger clients, Can they do the comparison? If they can, would they be willing to take on a one time project like this? If they can, that would probably filter enough names that the remaining list will an acceptable starting point.

Is there any way to ping an address to see if it is still valid, without sending an email?

We should be switching companies this month, and this issue has been dragging on without a solution. I hope there is a simple answer out there.
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 3/7/2008 at 6:55 PM Accepted
    The first thing I'd do is ask your new vendor to reconsider your request. If you had a million email addresses, I would better understand their position, but you've got only 10,000 names, so 2,000 bounces is not going to upset anyone's apple cart.

    Having said that, there are services that purport to do exactly what you're talking about. Here's one:
    https://www.deskshare.com/sev.aspx

    Google "check to see if email address is valid" and see other results.

    If worst comes to worse, you can always run your list through a deployment solution that will not require your list to be cleaned up, but if you do that, why not just stick with them once it's done?

  • Posted on 3/7/2008 at 8:34 PM Member
    You can also change your front end platform. There are a lot of open source code solutions for email contacts. Being a site that has been around for awhile I would think you have quite a list of emails. This open sourse system can send news letters and other emails in a blast with no problem. Buildtelligence.com has these products as well as others that can send this list out through their software 25 emails at a time until the list is complete. I belive they provide all the detail information on bounced emails as well. Good Luck
  • Posted on 3/8/2008 at 9:54 AM Author
    I want to thank each of you for your help.

    It seems that Paul's (inbox_interactive) suggestion is exactly what I'm looking for. It does the email equivalent of a ping on the smtp server. Even better, it does it for a lot less money than I expected to pay.

    I knew something like that had to be out there. I just didn't know where to look or what to look for.

    We have never purchased a list, and have no plans to. In fact, when we switch companies, we will be going to a double opt-in sign up. We might even ask our current subscribers to confirm that they still want to receive email from us. I'd rather have a smaller, happier crowd than a larger list of people who don't like us.

BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(E-Marketing)