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Scary Stories About Email List Cleaning

Business , Company , April 9, 2018

Email list cleaning can be good or bad. It all depends on the company that is aggregating your data. Over the years, we have heard dozens of frightening stories about bad experiences with email validation services therefore I think it would be good to write about them to give help warn you before you make the same mistakes.

Switched Lists

A few years ago, I had a client have me sign a huge non-disclosure and data safety agreement. Since we don’t keep data, it’s all good with me. He continued to tell me this awful story. One of our competitors scrubbed his list and sent it to someone else and vice versa. Get this – both companies were in a similar industry. One had an optin list of 120,000 subscribers to an online poker game (Texas Hold’em smartphone game to be exact) while the other client had a list of 80,000 gamblers. Both lists were sent to the wrong client(s). It wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the lists were not named! But they were named by company name and list numbers. I don’t need to fill you in on the rest of that story.

Suppression Switch

A client of mine said, one time a competitor (email verification services) accidently scrubbed against the wrong suppression list. When they sent the email, they hit all kinds of traps, complainers, bounces and litigators. Nearly shut them down. Manually scrubbing (sending a file without FTP and/or UI automation) is a major risk. When we first started scrubbing files back in the early 2000’s, we did things manually on a desktop. It was easy to hit the wrong button when choosing suppressions. Always ask the email list cleaning company “where” and “how” they manipulate the data.

Stolen Data

You’d better be seeding your data! An easy way to do so is create a free email account and have it fwd to your regular email. 90% of all email list hygiene companies will keep your data. If they say they don’t, just assume they are lying. They might not use it “right then” but you can bet your life they will later. Many have API’s where they upload all of the data into an appending platform have offer access to the data to their clients. Your data just goes into the “pot” for all to gain access to. Bottom line is, you have to be able to trust your email validation services Company, so find out what they do with your data after you upload it. eHygienics and Verify550 will not and never has used any of their clientele data. We will sign anything you wish.

Email list cleaning keeps you from being a threat

Business , Company , Research , February 28, 2018

Email list cleaning is getting more popular as the years go by. The more email marketers share data, the larger the suppression lists of protestors, threats and litigators there are. Marketers call these threats, however, consumers find marketers the real threat. According to a survey by Fluent, out of 1,900 consumers age 18 and older who live in the United States, “…only 15% of Americans say the emails they receive from marketers are frequently or always useful. Some 7% of respondents say the marketing emails they receive are always useful, and 8% say they are frequently useful. In addition, 29% of respondents say marketing emails are sometimes useful, 33% say they are rarely useful, and 24% say they are never useful…”

That means 85% of consumers find that email advertisements are worthless and will most likely ignore or report you. Many large email service providers consider a .01% complaint rate to be the threshold. This means 100 complaints out of 1 million records. Any bulk email marketer will look at these stats and most certainly find better alternatives to ESP’s. Especially if their lists are not confirmed optin. MTA’s are easy to find but IP’s are not. In order to set up your own ESP, you will need to learn all about traffic thresholds into all of the internet service providers and have consistent feedback loops, compliance regulations and real contact information.

Email service providers now are tracking all of their clientele data. This means, all records being sent, blocked, bounced and complained about are known. Large ESP’s are doing billions monthly, so it’s safe to say they know if your list has bounces or not right after you upload it. Some ESP’s will assign you worse performing IP’s if they suspect you are uploading an old list, just to make a few bucks at first. That is why email list cleaning is even more paramount than ever before. Even if your list is optin, yet is a few months old, you will be most likely wondering why your deliverability is so low. It’s because your list is not clean.

Email list verification now belongs in the white listed space. For years, many just did it on their own and mostly got away with it, but inexperienced emailers will more than likely quit the industry because they will not get the deliverability they want and will be a threat to ESP’s and the list itself. If you use your company name and domain for email marketing and send to a list from your CRM, LinkedIn and prospecting list, you may be blacklisted due to spam and never be able to work with that ESP again. Or worse, if you end up getting your domain blacklisted, you are now on the spam fighting radar and although you may get delisted, they are monitoring you. Good luck finding email list verification free because it’s a high commodity.

Email list cleaning format and sizes

Business , Company , February 28, 2018

Email list cleaning needs to be robust and move mountains. When an email marketer cleans their list, they send to it immediately, so the timing is essential plus the size of the file needs to be just right for the correct conditions. Many email marketing systems use different formats so every email marketer should own parsers and appending software to manipulate their databases so there are not errors when it comes to sending mail.

Delimiters

Email cleaning companies and service providers use several different delimiters for their system. The average is comma with semicolon in second place. Some use pipe delimiters and colon but comma is what most email list validation service uses. Separating your data is so important. Many use a semi colon because some data uses comma only to separate data inside one cell. In example, some data has/have sentences with periods. In this case, using a comma to separate is a bad idea, therefore semi-colon is the right choice.

Multiple Columns

It’s rare to find email verification free, let alone a company that will not support multiple columns. Most data comes with name, email, phone and hundreds of other combinations. These are called “headers” and with that comes multiple columns. If an Email list cleaning company does not support multiple columns, then that is a red flag. Professional systems should support at least a million records and with multiple columns.

Size

There should be no reason to scrub any more than 1 million records at a time. We have clients upload hundreds of files into our FTP utilizing our batch API and can get the files out quickly. A typical file with 1 million records and multiple columns can be up to 250 mb. Anything over that is not necessary since most lists are not as big as that anymore. There was a time, ten years ago, where these lists were needed cleaned, but hygiene and email marketing has changed since then. Most lists are now smaller and targeted versus the shotgun approach.

Excel

Excel can open up to 1.2 million records. Anything over that, it will show an error. Use excel as a rule of thumb on sizes of files you need scrubbed. If your database is larger and you need to open it up to cut it down, TextPad for windows works well and BBEdit if you use MAC. Both applications can open up at least 1 gb files.

Email list cleaning and the pitfalls of giving up your data

Business , Company , Research , Team , February 24, 2018

Email list cleaning is a spendy process. It’s more expensive than sending email itself with your own MTA. It requires validating if they email is a threat like a trap or litigator or verify if they email is deliverable, catch-all or bounce. The process that goes into our own validation and verification sends your list through 9 GB of suppressions and 3 SMTP handshakes for each email where we pick the best 2 out of 3 for reporting. Verify550 is not a data aggregator nor does it email advertisements or sell data. We just clean lists. We are not interested in doing anything with our client’s data because our process is in real time. That is why we charge $1,000 per million. To get accurate results and to not touch our client’s databases. (more…)

The right and wrong way to do email list verification

Research , February 13, 2018

We have explained the differences between validation and email list verification in previous posts. In short, validation does not remove bounces nor does it do an smtp handshake. Many validation companies do, however, mx checking where it checks certain steps if the mail exchange is setup properly. But they do not do smtp handshakes. In order to understand verification and to choose the right company, it’s important to look for clear signs of authentication as most verification companies miss many steps in order to save money.

Social networks (the wrong way)

Ask your email list cleaning company how they do verification. Get them to be specific. Ask them if they do email list cleaning free of social networks. For a while, email marketers requested that emails be patched against social media email accounts. For a year or two, this verification method worked well because emails that were used for social networking were authentic, however, bots and fake profiles started filling up Facebook and Twitter therefore, you cannot use these as the best method for verification.

Appending (the wrong way)

Ask the email list Verification Company if they append date/time stamp emails that were verified during a special date appointment. In example, to save money, many verification companies will save the date and time stamp of when the email was verified. They then will not mail to that specific email until a set date is specified to save money. This idea works in theory but is not real time verification as some set dates of up to 30 – 90 days. Waiting this long to verify if an email is verified is not going to be accurate.

Scoring (the wrong way)

Like appending and social networking above combined, many verification companies will offer a technical term of scoring as their reporting feature. They offer the email on a scale of 0 – 10 (0 as good and 10 as bad). Most, if not all, email verification companies started as email marketers. Scoring works by tracking the date/time and when the email was sent last. It also connects to social networks. In example, if the email wasn’t sent for 90 days and does not have a social network profile, it can be scored as a 10.

SMTP Connection (the right way)

In order for an email to be verified correctly, without skipping steps, it has to be delivered. ISP’s have certain thresholds to allow a number of emails in from an IP range. Yahoo may allow only 3,000 from an IP per 24 hours or gmail 300. Verification companies must be deliverability experts by understand all ISP threhsholds.

Real time (the right away)

With an smtp connection comes real time reporting. In order to get the maximum bang for your buck, the email must be checked in real time and that means as the list is scrubbing, the system is sending an smtp handshake. Verify550 does this 3 times for each email in real time and picks the best two out of three in their reports.