Email Hygiene: How to Clean Email Lists and Drive Engagement

How do we get bits of meaty Spam out from between our teeth? We’ll brush, floss, and maybe even slosh around some mouthwash for good measure. I mean, it’s just oral hygiene 101.

What about keeping spam out of donors’ inboxes? Emails that are unwanted or unopened may, at worst, get marked as spam. Well, that’s what email hygiene is for.

Email hygiene is how successful charity marketing and communication teams treat the problems of low email engagement and high spam complaints. And by email engagement, we mean email opens and click-throughs.

By measuring email opens, you can tell if the subject or topic of your emails reflects your donors’ interests. Similarly, measuring click-throughs helps you understand if your email content is compelling enough for the donor to take further actions - whether it’s to learn more, volunteer, donate, or anything in between.

Thus, performing email hygiene at least once every quarter is an easy way for your charity to help ensure you’re only emailing subscribers interested in your mission to help drive email engagement. And thanks to these tips, email hygiene can be easier than flossing.

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How to Drive Email Engagement

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Many email service providers such as Gmail consider an email subscriber inactive if they haven’t engaged with an email for a while. This period can be anywhere from 60 to 120 days. For this blog, let’s define a while as 90 days.

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Identify Your Inactive Subscribers

❌A subscriber who hasn’t clicked on a link in an email in the last 90 days; or
❌A subscriber who hasn’t opened an email in the last 90 days

Just because these subscribers aren’t engaging with your emails doesn’t mean they’re a lost cause. Indeed, email hygiene isn’t just about removing inactive subscribers; it’s an opportunity for your charity to send these subscribers a re-engagement email. It’s a way to remind them why they first subscribed to your list and get them excited about your cause again.

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Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers

You could send them valuable content such as a whitepaper or something as simple as asking them to update their email preferences. Whatever your approach, re-engagement emails are a way to remind your audience why they first subscribed to your list and get them excited about your cause again.

But if your inactive subscribers aren’t opening your re-engagement email either, it might be best to suspend bulk emails to these Contacts. By emailing inactive subscribers, you run into the risk of skewing your charity’s email engagement metrics. Not only will your charity report lower email open and click-through rates, but the results won’t provide an accurate picture of your marketing or communication team’s performance.

Remember, your subscribers support your charity for different reasons. Successful charity marketing and communications teams track email engagement metrics to learn what type of content resonates with different audiences in their subscriber list.

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For example, Generation Z audiences may appreciate that you’ve recognized their limited purchasing power and send fewer donation requests and more emails about volunteering opportunities. Baby boomers, on the other hand, might not want any emails at all and prefer direct mail. Sending too many irrelevant emails to subscribers is a surefire way to annoy your subscribers.

Do it often enough and they’ll hit the unsubscribe button. So, if you’re interested in providing value and keeping your subscriber happy, you need to have accurate engagement metrics.

In addition, emails with very low open rates are at higher risk of being marked as spam by email service providers. Inactive subscribers are also more likely to flag your emails as spam. All of these considerations impact your charity’s email deliverability - meaning your emails may get banished to your donors’ spam folders rather than arriving in inboxes.

Keep reading to learn quick and easy email hygiene practices that are proven to drive engagement. These include creating a list of inactive subscribers, suspending bulk emails to your inactive subscribers list, and removing inactive subscribers from existing lists.

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Email Hygiene Practices That Drive Engagement

🔵Creating an Inactive Subscribers List

Create an inactive email subscriber list, consisting of subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked-through an email in the last 90 days. With this list, you’re now ready to send a re-engagement email to your inactive subscribers.

🔵Suspending Bulk Emails to Inactive Subscribers

Suspending emails to your subscribers can be a difficult decision. Yet, it’s a necessary decision to help ensure you’re collecting accurate email engagement metrics and that your emails stay out of spam folders. Ensure you take the necessary steps to stop inactive subscribers from receiving bulk marketing emails.

🔵Removing Inactive Subscribers from Existing Lists

When needed, charities should remove inactive subscribers from existing lists, such as one-time donors, LYBUNT and SYBUNT donors, and P2P donors. Earlier in this blog, we defined an inactive email subscriber as someone who hasn’t engaged with an email in the last 90 days.

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Identify Your Engaged Email Subscribers

✔️ Subscribers who have clicked on a link in an email in the last 90 days; or
✔️ Subscribers who have opened an email in the last 90 days

By identifying engaged subscribers, you’ll learn which of your subscribers are interested in receiving your emails. Focus your email campaigns on providing value to these engaged subscribers. Because the more engaged a contact is, the easier it is to convert them into first-time, repeat, or monthly donors.

Not to mention, you’ll get more accurate metrics about the performance of your emails. I know we already mentioned it above, but it’s worth repeating. Because for marketing and communication teams, this is a HUGE benefit! The immediate benefit is that you should see a bump in email open and click-through rates. In the long term, you can learn what type of content resonates with different audiences.

Millennials, for example, are more accustomed to and interested in subscription services than any other generation. If your charity has a lot of engaged millennial subscribers, this is an opportunity for your charity to request modest monthly gifts. Since they’re already used to subscriptions, it’s a great way to keep them part of your charity’s ecosystem. That’s how powerful and valuable your donors’ data can be.

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Segment your engaged subscribers list

Successful charity marketing teams target niche audiences within their larger contact lists to supercharge engagement results. Essentially, you should create a list within a list. List-ception, if you will.

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Segment your year-end engaged donor list

As a charity ourselves, we know just how important year-end giving is. As part of your email hygiene practices, charities should consider that some donors are only active towards the end of the year. Thus, this specific audience might end up in your inactive email subscribers list because they don’t engage with your emails until late fall or early winter.

However, these donors are still crucial to your charity’s success and shouldn’t be neglected in your year-end giving email campaigns.

For charity marketing and communications teams, segment these audiences to help ensure your email supporters who primarily engage with your charity at the end of the year without skewing annual engagement metrics.

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Create the following year-end-specific lists:

• Year-End Engaged Subscribers: Contacts who engaged with one of your emails last November or December
• Year-End Engaged Donors: Contacts who engaged with one of your emails and made a contribution to your charity last November or December

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With these segmented lists, your charity can send these targeted year-end emails: 

• A summary of powerful impact stories from the year
• GivingTuesday promotional emails
• Reminders to donate by midnight on December 31 to donate before the tax time deadline

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And specifically for your year-end engaged donors, make sure to send:

• Thank you emails for contributions from the previous year
• Reminders to donate again this year
• You could even test the waters in January and February and send emails preparing them for Make it Monthly! In moderation, of course…

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Key Takeaways

If you find that your marketing or communications team deals with low email open, click-through rates, or higher spam complaints, you must start implementing email hygiene techniques. By following these best practices, your charity can start re-engaging inactive subscribers to convert them into engaged ones, leading too:

• More accurate email engagement metrics
• Increasing email open and click-through rates while reducing spam complaints
• Only targeting engaged subscribers who are interested in your emails

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