It would be nice…

It’d be nice to have a tool to uncover the zombie email addys, but until then, read this from @wise_laura: http://bit.ly/jxjZ9M Kelly Lorenz

There’s currently not a programmatic way to make those determinations, but this is where the relationship between senders and receivers comes in. All you have to do is ask recipients what they want. I know, I know, most marketers have a low opinion of the ability or desire of their recipients to respond to an email. And there are some actual challenges to getting a recipient’s attention when they’ve tuned out a particular sender or type of email.
Separating out zombie addresses from real addresses is a challenge. But it’s part of maintaining a healthy email marketing program. When I’m working with clients who are mailing old lists we first talk about their product and their goals. Then we look at what information they have for recipients. My goal is to separate out those addresses we know are good from those we know are bad from those we don’t know. It’s the ones in the don’t know category that we focus on.
I don’t recommend just deleting the addresses that are non-responsive. One of the reasons is that I read mail with images off by default and so I often look like one of those non-responsive recipients even when I’m actively reading and receiving mail. Instead, I like to look at what other data the customer has about a recipient to help classify them. Of course, there are often a subset of users we cannot identify if they’re zombies or not. For these addresses we plan a re-engagement campaign.
Clients who have gone through this process have seen an improvement in delivery and an improvement in responses and ROI.
Until and unless ISPs start rejecting mail for zombie accounts it’s the best chance senders have to separate the barely there from the not there at all.

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Zombie Apocalypse

I hope my series on zombie addresses has convinced you that there are zombie addresses on your list and that you should be concerned about the effect they have on delivery and metrics. Today I’d like to talk about what you can do to get rid of zombie addresses without affecting too many actual subscribers.
Anti-Zombie Weapons
One thing that many companies struggle with while dealing with zombie addresses is letting go of addresses. They are so tied up in the idea that a bigger list is better that they can’t let them go. Even if a particular address has not had any activity in 18 or 24 months, they insist that they can’t give it up, it might come back and the customer might make a giant purchase. No. It’s a zombie. It’s not coming back, except to eat your brains.
The first step to dealing with zombies is to acknowledge their existence. They are there, they are on your lists and they are dirtying up your lists. Pretending they’re not there does not make them go away. They are zombies. In no case is there a human inside. There is no potential sale lurking, waiting to jump out and act on that perfectly crafted offer.
The second thing to remember is that the humans that used to have the zombie addresses found you once and they are still interested in what you’re offering then they will find you again. They may even already be back on your list with their new email address.
While you can’t identify zombie addresses specifically, you can identify addresses that act like zombie addresses. These are addresses that have no activity over a long period of time, more than 12 months. For these addresses that haven’t had activity in 12 – 18 – 24 months, you want to confirm with the recipient that they are there and want to continue to receive mail from you.
The best way to notify them is to send an email asking if they want to remain on your list. If they fail to act, you will remove them from future mailings. Short, sweet and will let you drop off zombie addresses without much effort on your part.
I know, I know, you aren’t ready to let go so fast. After all, some people have come back after 24 months and made a purchase from the perfect offer. They’re not dead yet! OK. But you can’t get a response from them through email. They just don’t care enough about what you’re sending. That’s when you contact them through another channel.
For instance, if the email address is tied to a web account, say a social networking site or bank account or a web forum, you can also contact the user through your website. Next time they log in, send them a message that says their email address has been removed due to inactivity, but if they want to reactivate they can do so at the subscriber preference center or profile page. When they do, send them an email to confirm that this is the address where they want to receive mail. At this point you can give them a link or a magic cookie to past into the website to verify the address.
Or if you’re a bigger retailer you can send alerts to your customer service staff, so when the account holder contacts you by phone with a question or an order you can get an updated email address. If you have a loyalty program, have an alert come up at the point of sale and the clerk can ask for an updated email address.
I even know one company that would send postcards to their zombie accounts in an effort to re-engage them and get an active email address from them.
If the person never comes back, if they don’t ever interact with your business again, if none of the channels work to contact them and update the address then it really is best to just let the relationship go. It may not be you, or anything you’ve done. People move on, their interests change and that’s part of life. They may have moved outside of your service area, or they may have joined your list for a specific product that they don’t need or you don’t sell. They may have died and turned into a real zombie. In any case, they are not a viable prospect for your mail.
Email addresses and business relationships are not forever. Letting zombie addresses go is important for the health of any email marketing program.

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Food for thought

Companies that can’t be bothered to implement good subscription practices will rarely be bothered to send relevant or engaging email.
True or False?

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Don't take my subscribers away!

Tom Sather has a good summary of the problems with inactive email addresses and why data hygiene is critical to maintain high deliverability. These recommendations are some of the most difficult to convince people to implement.
Some of my clients even show me numbers that show that a recipient that hadn’t opened or read and email in 18 months, suddenly made a multi-hundred dollar purchase. Another client had clear numbers that showed even recipients that didn’t open for an entire year were responsible for 10% of revenue.
They tell me I can’t expect them to let their customers go. These are significant amounts of money and they won’t let any potential revenue go without a fight.
I understand this, I really do. The bottom line numbers do make it tough to argue that inactive subscribers should be removed. Particularly when the best we can offer is vague statements about how delivery may be affected by sending mail to unengaged users.
I don’t think many senders realize that when they talk about unengaged users they are actually talking about two distinct groups of recipients.
The first group is that group of users that actively receive email, but who aren’t opening or reading emails from particular senders. This could be because of their personal filters, or because the mail is going to the bulk folder or even simply because they don’t load images by default. This is the pool that most senders think of when they’re arguing against removing unengaged users.
The second group is that group of users that never logs in ever. They have abandoned the email address and never check it. I wrote a series of posts on Zombie Emails (Part 1, 2, 3) last September, finishing with suggestions on how to fight zombie email addresses.
Unlike senders ISPs can trivially separate the abandoned accounts from the recipients who just don’t load images. Sending to a significant percentage of zombie accounts makes you look like a spammer. Not just because spammers send mail to really old address lists, but a number of spammers pad their lists with zombie accounts in order to hide their complaint rates. The ISPs caught onto this trick pretty quickly and also discovered this was a good metric to use as part of their filtering.
I know it’s difficult to face the end of any relationship. But an email subscription isn’t forever and if you try to make it forever then you may face delivery problems with your new subscribers.

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