A healthy list contains contacts who asked for your email and still want it. It is the single most important factor for good deliverability. This article covers how to collect permission and how to keep your list clean.
- Levels of permission
- Collecting addresses
- Keeping your list clean
- Re-engage or remove inactive contacts
Levels of permission
Permission must be active and voluntary. The lower the permission level, the bigger your list may get, but the higher the risk of complaints, spam traps and blocks.
- Opt-out: you send to an address however you got it, and the contact has to unsubscribe to stop it. Don't use this, it's too close to spam.
- Pre-checked opt-in: the sign-up box is ticked by default and the contact must untick it. Don't use this. It isn't valid consent under GDPR, and Gmail doesn't count it as opt-in.
- Opt-in: the contact ticks the box themselves. This is the minimum.
- Confirmed opt-in: as opt-in, followed by a welcome email that confirms the subscription and offers a way to unsubscribe. Recommended.
- Double opt-in: as opt-in, but the contact is only added after clicking a confirmation link in an email. Recommended, and the best protection against typos and spam traps.
To set up a double opt-in flow in Symplify, see Custom Optin. Consent rules such as GDPR also require you to be able to show when and how each contact gave permission.
Collecting addresses
- Explain what the contact signs up for, for example which newsletters and how often.
- Link to your privacy policy where you collect the address, written in plain language.
- Keep the sign-up form short and show a confirmation page.
- Send a welcome or confirmation email within 24 hours.
- Reject malformed addresses, misspelled domains such as me@hotmai.lcom, role addresses such as abuse@, postmaster@ or sales@, and nonsense addresses.
- Protect the form with a CAPTCHA so bots can't sign up addresses.
- Offer a preference center so contacts can update their address and choose what they receive.
Keeping your list clean
- Never send to bought, rented or scraped lists.
- Keep bounces and complaints as close to zero as possible. Symplify stops sending to addresses that hard bounce.
- Use the Engagement filter to stop sending to contacts who no longer open or click.
- Process unsubscribes right away. See Unsubscribe methods.
Re-engage or remove inactive contacts
Inactive addresses can turn into bounces, complaints or spam traps. Clean them out regularly, for example every 3 to 6 months:
- Find contacts who have received at least a set number of emails, for example 5, without opening any of them.
- Send them a last email asking them to confirm that they want to stay subscribed.
- Unsubscribe or remove the contacts who don't respond.