Unengaged contacts are derailing your email marketing strategy. Here’s how Motiva’s Dark Pool Data Cleanup can get you back on track.
As a marketer, you know that some percentage of your email contact list is simply unengaged. They may be contacts that have lost interest in what you offer, or they’ve moved jobs, and your products are no longer relevant, or maybe those contacts were bots — never human.
Whatever the underlying cause, these unengaged contacts undermine your email marketing strategy, negatively skewing your engagement metrics, and worse. Depending on how many unengaged contacts you are still emailing, your actual engagement metrics may be much higher.
In our experience, the average database contains about 25% unengaged or problematic contacts. So for every 100 emails sent, only 75 are going to contacts that might eventually improve your bottom line. If ten contacts out of 100 open your email, that’s a 10% open rate. (You probably did that math on your own.)
But let’s say you got rid of that 25% unengaged group. Now you’re sending to the 75 contacts who are engaged. If that same ten still open your email, your TRUE open rate jumps to 13.3%.
And, of course, if your organization has a higher percentage of unengaged contacts, the more stifled your engagement metrics.
Damage Beyond Engagement Metrics
If the only damage these unengaged contacts were causing were to engagement metrics, it would be a frustrating-but-not-devastating fact of marketing life.
But it’s not.
The damage is much, much worse.
When you send emails to unengaged contacts, email service providers take note. When there’s no engagement, ESPs assume that the customer does not value the content you are sending.
Further, suppose ESPs see a large percentage of their customers not engaging with your content in any way. In that case, they start to make broader assumptions about ALL messages originating from your company’s domain. They’ll begin to assume you’re just spamming your email list, and your emails will be filtered or blocked entirely.
Even for your engaged contacts.
Plus, unengaged contacts are more likely to flag your messages as spam if they do engage, which only reinforces the ESP’s assumptions.
These assumptions about your content are known as your Email Sender Reputation or Sender Score. A higher sender score means your messages are more likely to land in your contacts’ inboxes, while a lower score means they may be relegated to the Spam or Promotional folder.
How often do you check those other folders? How often do you engage with any of those emails? Probably not often.
We understand that not all marketers have complete control over their email lists, and getting rid of those unengaged contacts is easier said than done. At some companies, it takes approvals, work orders, and acts of a deity of your choice to accomplish any meaningful email database cleaning.
A Better Approach to Unengaged Contacts
So, we devised a better option, starting with our Dark Pool Data Cleanup. It’s your first step in addressing the problem of unengaged contacts.
Dark Pool will analyze your engagement data for up to the past 12 months and filter your contacts into different categories based on their level of engagement, as shown below.
More than a few of our customers have been overwhelmed when they see the scope of the unengaged and problematic contacts problem (shout-out to the client who will remain nameless that had 77% unengaged contacts! They should serve as a warning to any companies still buying email lists).
But no need to worry about getting the IT department involved just yet to purge thousands — or hundreds of thousands — of contacts.
Our Dark Pool Smart Suppress decision service gives you the option to simply ignore those unengaged contacts during the email step configuration right from the Eloqua canvas.
Dark Pool Smart Suppress allows you to email only those contacts most likely to engage with your messaging, which increases your metrics, reduces the likelihood of spam complaints, improves your overall email deliverability, and your bottom line.
If you want to try to re-engage some of these contacts, we have an article to help you accomplish that, too. But with the genuinely unengaged, you may need to prepare to let them go.
Your overall email deliverability, and engagement metrics, will thank you.
Want a free, no-obligation, Dark Pool Spot Check to assess your possible exposure to a negative Sender Score? Click here for more information.
Want to see what else Motiva can do for you? Schedule a demo below.
