Love thy database: quantity vs quality

When it comes to your email database, many people feel that the size of your database matters more than the quality. This, however, is not the case; the quality of your database far outweighs your number of subscribers. 

What makes a quality database? A quality database is a database of opt-in subscribers that you communicate with frequently and that engage with your email content. Ideally, you know more about this database allowing you the opportunity to send segmented content and increase your engagement. You want an email database that is never surprised to hear from you.

Challenges related to list buying

It’s so easy to go out and purchase a massive email database and think this database is going to convert and increase your ROI. Unfortunately, this is not the case. All a purchased database is going to get you is spam complaints and a damaged sending reputation. Besides, purchased lists are often old and outdated.  The two main problems with purchased lists are:

• People tend to change their details regularly so you’ll end up emailing email addresses that are no longer in use. This will affect your sending reputation as the majority of these email addresses will bounce meaning it will be more difficult to reach the inbox of active customers. 
• People receiving your emails are likely going to mark your email as spam if they haven’t opted-in for communications. Spam complaints tarnish your sending reputation which again will make it more difficult to reach customers inbox in the future.

So how do you get the most out of your database?

Ensure that you only add people to your database who have opted in to receive email communications and use a verification tool to ensure that all your email addresses are correct and in use. 

Having a quality database is going to give you the real ROI that you want to achieve and help you gauge accurate email metrics. Building a database of quality subscribers is actually easier than you think.

So, how do I build a quality database?

Include a signup form on your website, encourage your social media following to join your database and even integrate your CRM with TouchBasePro to ensure all new customers are added to your email database automatically and without any worry. 

When used correctly, email marketing can get you an ROI of 43 to 1. The benefits of having a quality database far outweigh the benefits of having a sizeable unknown database. So give the big unknown database a skip and get the most out of your email marketing by contacting people who want to hear from you, and that will engage with your emails.