You've heard it time and time again: If you want to dodge ISP filters and get into your subscribers' inboxes, you've got to clean your list. But what exactly does "clean your list" mean? And how the heck do you do it? Here are the nuts and bolts, with real-life data from our recent re-opt-in campaign – a campaign that many of you actually participated in.

Before we delve into the details, keep in mind that "re-opt-in" is just a fancy way of saying, "Get your subscribers' permission ... again." You explicitly ask your existing subscribers if they still want to hear from you – and you remove those that don't.

I know what you're thinking. Hey, wait a minute. If I've already got their permission, why would I want to ask again?

The reason is simple: email deliverability . ISPs look at your email metrics when they're deciding whether to send your campaign to the inbox, the bulk folder or the email black hole in the sky. Sending email to invalid addresses or to users who have previously reported you as spam are the biggest red flags, but low open and click-through rates count against you, too.

So, if your list has lots of phantom mailboxes that no one checks anymore and disengaged readers who don't bother to unsubscribe (or worse, who hit the "Spam" button), you risk landing in the "junk" folder, which is almost as bad as not arriving at all.

The right time to re-opt-in

You should reconfirm subscriber interest if any of the following is true:

• Your open and click-through rates have slipped below a previously established baseline. If your open rate used to be 25 percent a year ago, but now it's consistently under 20 percent, it's time for some list-trimming. You don't need to re-opt-in your entire list, just the segment that's disengaged: for example, users who have been on your list for more than six months, but have not opened or clicked in that timeframe.
• You're experiencing poor email delivery. According to Lyris research, nearly one in five permission-based email messages ends up in the junk folder. If your inbox-delivery rates are considerably lower than this 80-percent benchmark, you can bet that list quality is to blame. As in the example above, focus on re-opting-in only the disengaged segment of your list.
• You have dramatically changed your email program to the extent that you are no longer sending the type of email your users originally said yes to. In this case, you should re-opt-in your entire subscriber base, not just disengaged subscribers.

List shrinkage is a part of the process (and it's also the point)

I wish we could tell you that you will retain the majority of your existing subscribers when you run a re-opt-in campaign, but the honest truth is, you won't.

I also wish we could get you to understand that list quality matters more than list size.

Many of the addresses you think you're "losing" are old, vacant, bad addresses that for whatever reason just don't bounce. Maybe Joe left ABC Company nine months ago, but IT never shut down his mailbox. Maybe Jane never officially cancelled her Hotmail account, but now she only checks Gmail. You're not really losing Joe or Jane, because they don't actually receive your messages in the first place. Their addresses are just taking up space on your list.

When you clean your list, you'll get rid of Jane and Joe. You'll also get rid of subscribers with valid addresses who just don't want to hear from you anymore. And you'll be left with a much smaller list of subscribers who actually do want to hear from you, and whose subsequent opens and clicks will help protect email delivery. Based on anecdotal evidence, you can expect 5-10 percent of your subscribers to fall into this last category and stay on your list.

How Lyris handled its recent re-opt-in campaign

In September and October, we re-opted-in a subset of our list. We had just consolidated The Intevation Report, a newsletter that focused exclusively on email-marketing best practices, and Inside Lyris HQ, a pub with a broader online-marketing focus. Since the newsletters were not a one-to-one match, we asked our entire Intevation Report subscriber base to opt in to the new publication.

• Email creative: In a re-opt-in campaign, the most important creative element is an unmistakable call to action that gives subscribers a real choice: "yes, I do want to hear from you" or "no, I don't want to hear from you." To see how we handled this, view our creative.
• Number of touches: Our opt-in-campaign consisted of three touches: an initial request, a text-only follow-up reminder one week later and a last-chance reminder three weeks after that. You should use the three-touch approach only if you have a fairly engaged list with a low spam-complaint rate. Otherwise, stick with two touches – or, if you have severe email-delivery issues, go down to only one touch.
• Subject lines: We performed A/B/C split tests and found that neutral, straightforward subject lines worked best. Our winners were: "We're sorry to have to say goodbye" for the first touch, "Permission to transfer newsletter subscription" for the second and "Last chance to transfer newsletter subscription" for the final touch.

Results from Lyris' campaign

We achieved a 21 percent opt-in rate, far above the 5-10 percent rate most marketers can expect. Our high response was partly due to the fact that we re-opted-in our entire subscriber base and got a bump from "active" subscribers, and it was partly due to the fact that we had a fairly clean, engaged list to begin with.

Here are a few of our takeaways:

• Our overall opt-in ("yes, keep me on the list") rate was 21 percent, and our overall opt-out ("no, take me off the list") rate was 2 percent.
• Of those who opened the emails, 36 percent opted in and only 8 percent opted out.
• When it came to multiple touches, the law of diminishing returns was definitely in play: we got 47 percent of our opt ins from our first touch, 32 percent from our second touch and 21 percent from our final touch (which also generated a couple of irate, "leave me alone" emails).
• We retained 10 percent of our disengaged subscribers, those who had not opened at least one newsletter in the last six months. By contrast, we retained 34 percent of engaged subscribers.

For those of you who chose to make the move from the Intevation Report to Inside Lyris HQ, thank you for your continued readership. Your clicks helped us refine our understanding of how to run a successful re-opt-in campaign, and we hope this article inspires you to tidy up your own list.

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About the Author

Anita M. Taylor is a marketing communications manager for Lyris. She is the editor in chief of the company's Inside Lyris HQ newsletter.

Related Resources:

• Subscribe to Inside Lyris HQ our monthly online-marketing newsletter.
• Download free online-marketing guides, tools and webinars in the Lyris Online-Marketing Resource Center.

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