Things are different since Google and Yahoo started crackin’ down on email spammers. Which has effected how I am scrubbing people who don’t open my emails off my list. Here’s a quick update on how I’ll be doing it from here through 2025.
Transcript
Hey friend, this is the fresh princess of email marketing speaking. You’re listening to episode 17 of the email sound booth podcast. And let me tell you today I am putting the fresh in fresh princess. I feel fresh. I got a fresh new haircut. I feel like Liz Wilcox is back. Side note, like I’ve been trying to grow my hair out while I have been growing my hair out.
Um, it was the longest it’s been. In a few years. And I just realized yesterday that, what the heck am I doing that for? Uh, I don’t. Actually like it. I mean, I like the way it looks on a good hair day. I don’t like the maintenance. Like I believe I have really beautiful curly hair And I also believe that in my head.
I believe that. Oh, yeah when I have long hair, I look so beautiful but I really am the worst at taking care of it. And yeah, so I just, I didn’t cut it as short as I normally cut it, but it feels like back to the Liz Wilcox, you know, and love length. I can wear my headbands again because it was getting so long that wearing a headband, I looked like I had a mullet.
And so I was wearing backward caps or trying not to wear hats at all, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Anyway, I feel lucky today that you’re listening. And speaking of fresh, I’m going to do a quick check in with you about scrubbing your list. This is a fresh list. Uh, I don’t think it’s a hot take.
I’ve seen some other peers of mine doing this, uh, but it’s definitely a fresh take. So first, scrubbing your list. What the heck is that? That’s when you get the cold people. When you get the people that aren’t opening your emails, they’ve gone cold, so to speak, off of your email list. Second, cold scrubbing is important for deliverability.
Right? It’s important for your metrics. We don’t want to continue, or excuse me, we don’t want to continuously count those people that are straight up cold, dead, you know, dead and stinking. They’re not opening your emails, right? So I liken it to, I call them the internet gods. All of those things that are going around the internet, uh, you know, checking on things, making sure, you know, we’re all stable, so to speak.
And if you’ve got, let’s say you’ve got, you know, Joey, Chris, and Lance on your email, uh, and they, they never, they never open your emails and they haven’t for like a year, every time. And you, let’s say you send weekly emails, so that 52 emails a year, right. And every time you send out an email, to Joey, Lance, and Chris.
Joey, Lance, and Chris put up a red flag, so to speak, to the internet gods because they’re not opening. So that’s a red flag. So you send 52 emails in a year, you’ve got, you know, 156 red flags just from those three people, right? 200, 1000 cold subscribers, how many red flags you have? Now, what are the red flags do, Liz?
First of all, red flags are bad, right? Uh, second, those red flags to the internet gods. Let’s say Justin now wants to join your email list. Justin, he opts in, he gives his consent. Yes, I want to hear more from this person. Well, Justin joins your email list, but the internet gods, they’re the boss, right? And they say, well, Joey, Lance, and Chris have given us all these red flags, even though Justin says he wants these emails, we know better.
We know these emails are crap because we’ve seen these other guys not open them. So we’re just going to put your emails in there. in the spam folder, in the junk folder. That’s why it’s so important to get cold scrubs or cold people off your list to scrub. We call it cold scrubbing. Okay. And third, the third thing I want to share with you is I’m doing it a little differently this year.
Since there’s all these new requirements led by Google and Yahoo in 2023 and 2024, I’m cold scrubbing. I’m getting rid of these cold subscribers a little differently. Now those email requirements, they’re a whole different podcast topic. If you need that, look forward to episode 22. Okay. And I’ll leave two resources for you in the show notes, but basically there’s a lot going behind the scenes of how emails are sent and Really who gets the seal of approval by the internet gods.
And because of that, I am personally erring on the side of extreme caution. And I’ll probably be doing that through 2025 until the end of 2025. There’s, you know, big tech making big changes. So I’m going to be extra squeaky clean here. All right. Give me one sec. I’m recording this. It’s early in the morning.
I need some water.
And you like how I’m not editing these podcasts, like you’re just gonna hear me drinking water. I just want, I don’t want it to be perfect, I just want you to have this info. Okay, so here’s how I would normally get rid of subscribers that are deemed cold to my email list. Normally, I, once a quarter, This part isn’t changing the frequency isn’t changing.
So once a quarter I have something in my calendar that says cold scrub as a reminder to go into my email list. Hmm and delete cold scrubs, but before I delete these cold subscribers I send them through a sequence. Mine is personally just three email. I think it’s three emails over the course of three days.
Some people space them out. Some people have more and it’s basically, it’s a really simple sequence. I could make it more sophisticated, but it’s basically, Hey, you signed up for X reasons. Are you still interested in X? you know, click here to stay on the list. And when they click that, it marks them in gauge, it removes them from the cold scrub sequence, and I don’t delete them after.
Now, the emails, like I said, three emails over three days. At about five or six days, I go back in, I see how many cold subscribers I still have left, how many people did not click and say, yes, I want to stay on this email list. I export that file. I export those email addresses, right? Because I want to keep them just, just in case I accidentally deleted somebody that don’t need to be deleted.
And me saying that is not your permission slip to panic about accidentally deleting important people. That very rarely happens. Anyway, I export the file. I put it in Google drive and then I delete those people from my email list. I delete them simply because I don’t want to worry about them. Some people just put them kind of in a segment that says like, do not email these people.
I just feel like that’s digital clutter. That’s mental clutter. So I just delete them. So what will I be doing? Now here’s how I’m doing it now. I’m just deleting them. I’m skipping that Sequence I said the three emails in three days. I’m skipping that I’m going in and I’m just Exporting the file because you never know there are accidents happen And I am straight deleting them now.
You might be wondering why Because, you know, to be honest, I’m just not sure that these big tech companies are telling us everything they’re doing behind the scenes as far as, like, what are those internet gods judging us on now? I don’t know. They’ve told us XYZ, but I just feel like there’s no government regulation that’s telling them they have to be transparent, right?
So if they’re telling us XYZ. What’s, you know, A through W, right? I don’t know. Uh, so I just want to make sure I really am only sending to people that want and read my emails. I have to let my ego, I have to put my ego in check. I have to let go of, Oh, well maybe, maybe, maybe, cause right now I’m just delete, delete, deleting.
I don’t know. What’s going on behind the scenes and what’s a red flag to the internet gods now that they’re making these, uh, changes. So, I just have to think to myself, life will go on. I will grow my list. That’s tomorrow’s episode, by the way, number 18. And I won’t miss those people that my ESP, my email service provider, deems cold.
Which that might be your second question. How do I know who is cold? How do I know who’s not opening my emails? Well, your ESP doesn’t want to get in trouble either, right? You’re the internet gods are looking at your ESP too. So they are sorting that information for you. I know with Kit, formerly known as ConvertKit, it’s super simple to find out.
You just click on your dashboard where it says confirm subscribers, and that opens up a menu, and that’s it. And you can click on cold subscribers. I’m not sure about other ESPs. I’ve used convert kit, kit, uh, since 2017. So I’m not sure, but I’m sure you can Google it or just look in there like help or support area.
You could also ask, of course, in our email sound booth, uh, Facebook group. So the second part of my plan for 2025 is that I’m also going to be setting up an automation to delete anyone that does not open an email from me in the first 14 days of joining my email list. Look, those first couple of weeks, I’m sending some really good stuff out.
I am trying to razzle. I am trying to dazzle. And if you’re not in, you’re out, babe. Patricia, my amazing life manager and admin extraordinaire. If you’re listening, write that down because we really got to get moving on that automation. All right. So that’s my plan through 25, uh, just deleting those folks and then adding the automation of, um, you know, if you don’t open in 14 days, we just straight up delete you from our system.
I don’t want to continue. You know, emailing you for, let’s see, I do it probably every 90 days. So whatever 90 minus 14 is, uh, I hit my head a couple of years ago. It’s really hard to do mental math nowadays. Okay. Now, of course, if my plan gives you hives. You don’t have to just delete people. Remember I told you to download, export that CSV spreadsheet of those email addresses that you’re about to delete.
Some people, like me, I just do it for peace of mind. Others can use that CSV spreadsheet. to run meta ads and such. I, again, I just store them in my Google drive in case someone emails saying, what the heck, I’m not getting your emails anymore. Then I have the data on why I deleted them. And if that was a mistake, which listen up, listen, that hardly ever happened.
So don’t let me saying that freak you out. Hardly, hardly, hardly, hardly ever. ever happens. Uh, but let’s talk about that for a second on why it would happen. Uh, when it does happen, it’s usually I accidentally deleted a member. Uh, so I do have a membership as you probably know, and I don’t delete those subscribers, people who are actively paying for EMM for email marketing membership, but at the same time are not actively paying.
actively opening the emails, they stay on my list. And sometimes there’s accidents, that’s why I export that file. So it’s worth the risk for me to keep sending emails to those actively paying members. Because I know they’ve signed up in the last four years, so I know their address is likely still working, they’re still using that inbox, and they haven’t marked me as spam, etc.
And I know that some folks, they join, and they’ll store my emails for months and months at a time, and then open them all at once, when they have the capacity for email marketing. They just like seeing my emails, and that keeps it top of mind for them. So I hate to delete them from my system and be accused of anything shady.
Anyway, that’s the plan. Super simple. I recommend you do as much of this as possible as well. And if you need more email marketing support and to learn how to ensure as many folks as possible, Don’t get cold in the first place. It happens, but we can always get better at it, right? I’d love for you to join email marketing membership.
You already know it’s nine bucks a month link in the show notes. If you’re into it. All right, that is it for today. As always, I’d love for you to come back to the reviews of this podcast and let me know how this episode has helped you with your email marketing today. I’m Liz Wilcox. You are awesome. And I’ll meet you at the next episode of the email sound booth.