For most companies, email communications form an important part of their digital marketing ROI. Unfortunately, a vital factor in accurately measuring the value of your email list is also one of the hardest: saying goodbye to subscribers that just don't fit! While we feel your pain at the idea of losing a lead, it's better for your business and the contact to focus effort on only those who are really ready for what you have to offer. 

Hubspot (via MarketingSherpa) highlights that the average email list churns at around 25% a year, meaning you can expect to lose a sizeable chunk of your current subscribers by the time the New Year rolls around. You will of course add subscribers as you lose others, but even some of those you lose should be seen as a positive.

Why? Because some contacts are simply never going to buy from you and actually skew your reporting on real customer data, making it less clear what actions you should take to improve crucial metrics like open and click through rates.

Although a large and growing email subscriber list feeds the ego, it's often a vanity metric that can fail to feed the bottom line if you trust it without qualification.

That qualifying process comes in the form of email scrubbing, with the following being just some of the reasons you'll want to apply our clean-up suggestions to your own email list:

• Zero in on only the customers and leads who truly have an interest in your business
• Decrease "angry unsubscribes" and potential spam reports
• Create a pure view of who really wants to see your email communications, including trustworthy metrics to guide improvements
• Increase open rates, clicks and conversion rates

With the case firmly established for a thorough email scrubbing, here's how you go about it for your own business list.

How to Scrub Your Email List Clean

Start off by making sure that all of the bounces and undeliverable email addresses have been checked off from your last campaign. Look for input errors such as a missing ".com" or spelling errors like "gmil.com."

Once you've corrected these basic issues, it's time to dig deeper.

Categorize & Conquer

By segmenting your subscribers into different categories, you can send each of them more relevant content without annoying others as you do so.

Think in terms of their demographic, contrasting interests, buying power and which stage of the sales funnel you  believe they're currently at. You might send more general content that aids research to those early in the purchase process, for example, where as special offers and specific advice will be more suitable for those who you know to be close to buying.

Read Your Reports 

Email metrics tell you a lot about what each individual subscriber wants and how you can help them. Look at how they interact with your email content to understand what works and what goes unclicked. Run tests with different types content to see what resonates. 

By contrast, if you know someone has stopped opening your emails or has received many without ever clicking on an offer or article, dig deeper into who they are and what they need. If they simply don't seem like a good fit for what your services, don't hesitate to remove them from your list.

Let It Go!

Although this is the object of the exercise it bears repeating: don't be afraid to remove redundant subscribers!

If you don't see interest or activity from them after repeatedly receiving your emails, they're simply taking up space and skewing reports that could help you improve your emails for others. As the famous song (sort of) says: "Let 'em go!"

The Bottom Line

At best, a bloated email subscriber list is misleading and clouds your business judgement. At worst, it's a road to spam complaints, wildly inaccurate measurements, and disastrous open rates.

Even though a thorough list scrubbing can be disheartening at first, in the long run it helps to ensure greater email deliverability, increased open rates and content that truly adds value to your subscribers. And as any good inbound marketer knows, an engaged reader is much more likely to reach for their wallet, so let's get scrubbing!