Mailing to New Customers and Managing Deliverability Risk

List size is an important metric for many marketers. It dictates the number of inboxes they have access to and can drive internal conversations around budgets, initiatives, and available resources. As a result, the same question is often repeated to our deliverability operations team:

How do we grow our list and mail to new users?

Today, I want to focus on the second half of that question: How do we mail to new users. It is important to understand that mailing to new email addresses comes with a unique set of challenges and pitfalls separate than those associated with general mailings. These are addresses that have never previously been included in your marketing campaigns and are inherently risky as a result. In short, brands should not forget that new users are strangers. Applying scrutiny to these addresses before considering them potential customers will do tremendous good toward protecting sender reputation.

Stranger Danger

Any new address can cause real harm to a mailing list as a potential spam trap, invalid contact, or unengaged user. To avoid reputation ramifications, the first thing a marketer should do is consider the motivation a particular user had for signing up for emails.

All acquisition channels come with their own unique drawbacks:

In-store sign ups may not have realized they were providing contact information for more than a simple receipt.
Shoppers seeking to collect on discounts or sign up incentives may not be interested in mailing content long term.
Form completion addresses may have simply been trying to get beyond the paywall or pop-up add blocking their view.

All are susceptible to improperly set user expectations, and the likelihood that users have supplied false, or inaccurate data is high. As such, no marketer should simply release a new address into the full scope of their email ecosystem.

Put Your Users to Work

Especially in the wake of new global privacy regulations like GDPR, implementing the correct procedures surrounding consent is critical for mailers. Implementing a confirmed opt in allows the user to do a portion of this work for you. A confirmed opt in requires further action from a user in order to confirm that they do wish to opt into receiving messages from your brand.

After signing up, a welcome email is triggered to these users prompting this confirmation. From there, the path is clear: Those who take action to complete this confirmation can be funneled into regularly scheduled campaigns – those who do not, should not.

Shortcuts Aren’t Worth the Risk

Inevitably, there will be senders who do not have the patience for organic list growth and development. From this vantage point, list purchasing and appending can sound very appealing.

But let’s be quite clear about this:

Email addresses added to mailing lists should *never* be purchased.
Email addresses that are acquired for mailing should *never* be from appended lists.

These strategies not only go against Oracle recommendations and myriad privacy regulations, but they are also guaranteed to negatively impact your sender reputation in the eyes of ISPs. Spam traps and invalid addresses will enter your mailing stream via these methods, and spam complaints, hard bounce rates, trap hits, and unengaged users will all increase as you attempt to contact them. Spam folder placement directly correlates with these negative metrics, and an inevitable blacklisting will further destroy your inboxing rates and overall standing in the eyes of ISPs.

Once lost, mailing reputation requires weeks of pristine sending to correct. Ask yourself: Is it worth it? Instead, stick to best practices, use a confirmed opt in for your users, and slowly release your new senders into your larger mailing campaigns. Your performance will be stronger as a result.

Learn how to achieve email deliverability that really delivers. Download Email Deliverability: Guide for Modern Marketers.