Everest List Hygiene Playbook: Beginner

• If you are a new Everest customer with no prior relationship with Validity, complete onboarding to ensure you are familiar with navigating and using Everest.   
• If you were a Return Path or 250ok customer and are moving to Everest, complete your migration process. 
• Ensure you have completed the Everest Basic Set Up Guide. 

Important! As you use Everest, keep track of the subscription allotments based on your service tier and plan according to your sending frequency and the size of your email database. You can find your subscription information by navigating to: My Everest>Account Settings>Subscription. 

• List hygiene terminology 
• Common list hygiene challenges 
• How List Validation fits into your process 
• Important list hygiene metrics and where to find them 
• Validating the target subscriber list for your next campaign 
• What to do next 

• List hygiene: List hygiene is the process of cleaning your email address files to ensure the removal of invalid, unsubscribed, and inactive addresses as well as subscribers reporting your messages as spam. 
• Bounce rate: The percentage of emails bounced back to you by the mailbox provider. Email bounced back to you is often due to an invalid email address or temporary technical issue. 
• Delivered rate: The percentage of email the mailbox provider accepted for delivery. An email accepted for delivery does not mean it reached the inbox. 
• Open rate: The percentage of email opened by your subscribers. 
• Click rate: The percentage of subscribers that clicked on a link or call-to-action. 
• Valid %: The percentage of email addresses associated with a valid account. 
• Invalid %: The percentage of email addresses that may have an incorrect format, invalid domain, or does not exist. 
• Risky %: The percentage of email addresses that may be disposable, a role address, or belong to a domain that accepts all emails and can’t be validated. 

Many senders are unaware of the negative impact that sending email to invalid email addresses has on their email program. Common sender challenges with list hygiene issues are: 

• We have a high number of email addresses that show up as “bounced” or “not delivered” in our ESP reports. 
• We frequently send to email addresses that have been in our database for a long time and have not recently engaged with our email campaigns. 
• We purchase some of our email addresses and are unsure if the email addresses are valid. 
• We spend a lot of money acquiring new email addresses with poor or mixed results. 

By using Everest’s List Validation, senders see improved results with: 

• Fewer bounced emails 
• Improved delivered rates 
• Increased Open rates 
• Increased Click rates 

Please read Best practices for list hygiene for additional list hygiene tips. 

A traditional email marketing process consists of three phases: Pre-Send, In-Flight, and Monitoring. Using List Validation to identify valid email addresses during the pre-send phase is an important part of your list hygiene strategy.  

Pre-send 

• Inform your email campaign strategy with Everest’s Competitive Intelligence. 
• Plan campaign 
• Select target subscriber list  
• Design campaign 
• Validate subscriber list using Everest’s List Validation feature
• Test campaign design using Everest’s Design & Content feature

In-Flight 

• Send campaign to subscribers and the Everest seed list.
• View your campaign’s inbox placement, spam, and missing results using Everest's Inbox Placement feature.

Monitoring 

• Monitor performance using Everest’s Engagement feature, your ESP, or internal sending platform. 
• Monitor sending reputation metrics using Everest’s Monitoring feature to understand the impact to your deliverability. 
• Monitor DMARC compliance to identify unauthorized use of your domain and brand using Everest’s Infrastructure feature. 

List Validation 

List Validation metrics are displayed after your list is validated in the Pre-send>List Validation section: 

• Valid %: It is safe to send email to these addresses. 
• Invalid %: It is not safe to send to these email addresses. Add them to your suppression list. 
• Risky %: Use caution when sending to these email addresses. Email addresses in this category often have poor results when compared to email sent to valid email addresses. 

Read the How to use Everest to improve list hygiene section below for detailed List Validation instructions. 

Engagement  

List hygiene engagement data is visible in the Monitoring>Engagement section when using the Everest engagement pixel and integrating Everest with your ESP. To get started, use the data provided by your ESP or internal sending platform. 

• Bounce rate 
• Delivered Rate 
• Open rate 
• Click rate 

Remember to check your List Validation subscription allotment by navigating to: My Everest>Account Settings>Subscription prior to validating your list! You don't want to burn through all of your allotments too quickly. If you prefer, validate a few test addresses just to learn how it works.

Validate your target subscriber list using List Validation 

Metrics supported in this section: 

• Valid % 
• Invalid % 
• Risky % 

For your next campaign:

1. Identify the target subscriber list. If you are only going to perform a List Validation test and not validate your campaign's subscriber list, proceed to the next step.

• Exclude validating email addresses that have engaged (e.g. opens, clicks) with your email in the last 90 days. These addresses are valid.
• Focus on validating
  • New subscribers that joined since your last campaign and have yet to receive any email.
  • New subscribers that joined within the last 30 days and have not engaged with any of your email.
  • Subscribers that have not engaged with your email within the past 90 days.

2. Create a .CSV or .TXT file of your target subscriber list with one email address per line.

3. Login to Everest 

4. Navigate to Pre-Send and click List Validation 

5. Click Validate New List  

6. Enter a list description. A good description is a target segment name (e.g. New newsletter subscribers, 90+ day unengaged) or the campaign name and date (e.g. Black Friday Nov 26 2021). Use a description meaningful to your business. 

7. Upload your .CSV or .TXT file by clicking Choose File. 

• You may also paste your list into Everest by clicking the Paste List tab. 

8. Click Save List to start the validation process. 

9. On the My Lists tab, click View Details when the validation is complete. 

10. Download the Valid addresses. This is your target subscriber list for your next campaign.

• Email campaigns sent to valid email addresses are more likely to reach the inbox and get positive engagement results. 

11. Download the Invalid addresses and add them to your suppression list. 

• Email campaigns sent to invalid email addresses may lower inbox placement for valid email addresses.

12. Send your campaign to the target subscriber list of valid email addresses.

• Be sure to include the Everest seed list when sending your campaign so you can monitor results using Everest's Inbox Placement feature.

Note: You have the option of sending to risky addresses, but they are higher risk and can dilute performance results. Creating a strategy to send to risky addresses is covered in the advanced list hygiene playbook.

1. Proceed to the intermediate list hygiene playbook to create a list validation strategy.

• Everest List Hygiene Playbook: Intermediate

2. Send your campaign to the validated target subscriber list. Be sure to include the Everest seed list so you can monitor inbox placement results.

3. Continue reading our other Everest playbooks to help take your email marketing program to the next level.  

• Everest Playbooks