Everest List Hygiene Playbook: Intermediate

• 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 Setup Guide. 

• To get the most visibility into performance metrics related to your list quality, complete the advanced setup guides. 

  • Everest Advanced Setup Guide 2: Sending Reputation (FBL Complaints) 
  • Everest Advanced Setup Guide 3: Engagement (Pixel and ESP/sending platform integration) 

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 
• How to determine your List Validation Strategy 
• Establishing baseline metrics 
• How to start identifying segments vulnerable to list decay 
• What to do next 

• 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. 
  • Address Invalid %: The email address format is incorrect, such as a missing @ sign. 
  • Domain Invalid %: The domain either doesn’t exist or is spelled incorrectly. 
  • Account Invalid %: The domain is valid, but the specific email address does not exist. 
• 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. 
  • Accept-all %: Receiving server accepts all email and invalid email addresses may be bounced back to you later. 
  • Role %: Email addresses serving a specific function such as sales@, marketing@. These addresses may be monitored by a team of people and give unpredictable results. 
  • Disposable %: Temporary addresses created to sign up for a promotion and expire quickly. 
• Unknown %: The email address appears to be valid, but the receiving server is not responding. This could be temporary or represent an abandoned domain. 

Sending email to invalid email addresses has a negative impact on your email program. Common sender challenges with list hygiene issues are: 

• We know having a clean list is important but don’t know how to quantify the impact of validation 
• We do bulk list validations each quarter, but the results are not as good as expected 
• 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 

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 

In-Flight 

• Send campaign to subscribers and the Everest seed list 
• View your campaign’s inbox placement, spam, and missing results 

Monitoring 

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

Once you decide on and implement a list validation strategy, you can find the metrics to help you measure the impact of your strategy in Everest. 

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. 

Engagement  

List hygiene engagement data is visible in the Monitoring>Engagement (Engagement Overview and Delivery Insights) feature 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 

Before getting started, check the number of available List Validation allotments by navigating to My Everest>Account Settings>Subscription. The number of allotments you have may impact how you use Everest’s List Validation. 

When it comes to deciding on a list validation strategy, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Each business needs to assess its email program and weigh business needs with the number of purchased allotments. 

Validation guidelines 

• We recommended using List Validation primarily for new subscribers (list acquisition) and unengaged subscribers (list hygiene) for best results. 
• New subscriber email addresses often contain syntax errors, malformed domains or are temporary addresses.  
• Unengaged subscribers may represent people that have left their job or abandoned an email address for a new email address. 
• It isn’t necessary to validate subscriber email addresses that already engage with your email. It is only at the point they become unengaged should they be validated. 

Determine the validation method and frequency 

Most businesses use a combination of methods to suit evolving business needs. Frequently check the number of available allotments to determine if adjusting your strategy or additional allotments are required. 

Important! Implementing the Everest List Validation API requires your internal development resources.

Select validation method 

• API: Use the Everest List Validation API if development resources are available. The API allows you to validate all addresses at the point of collection and in your database in real-time or with an automated schedule. 
  • We recommend validating addresses in real-time using the Everest List Validation API as it prevents invalid email addresses from entering your database. 
• API and bulk: There may be a variety of reasons why you need to use both validation methods. For example, a business is only able to use the Everest List Validation API on a single web form but also collects new subscribers through a co-registration program with a partner. In this case, they could use the Everest List Validation user interface to validate addresses obtained from the partner as well as lists of unengaged subscribers.
• Bulk: If you do not have API resources or are waiting for resources to become available, use the Everest List Validation user interface to run all of your list validations. 

For instructions on validating your list in Everest, please read:

• How to import and validate your list using Everest List Validation 

Select validation frequency 

• Real-time: If you use the Everest List Validation API, validate email addresses at the time they are entered at the point of collection or by using an automated database script set up by your IT department. 
• General frequency guidelines when using Everest's List Validation. Use the guidelines below as a starting point and adjust the frequency as needed based on available allotments. 
  • Daily senders should validate at least twice per week 
  • Weekly senders should validate at least twice per month 
  • Monthly senders should validate at least once per month 
• Prior to each Campaign: Some senders may find it easier to validate addresses for each campaign to manage allotments for both planned and ad-hoc campaigns.  
  • For each individual campaign, identify your target segment(s).
    • Validate new subscribers that have not been sent any email or have been sent email and have not engaged. 
    • Validate existing subscribers that have not engaged with your email within the last 90 days.
    • It is unnecessary to validate email addresses that have engaged with your email program in the past 90 days. These addresses are valid.
• Ad-hoc: Use Everest’s List Validation for these important scenarios. 
  • Unplanned campaigns: Last-minute campaigns are needed for a variety of reasons. Take the time to validate email addresses to help ensure your campaigns are delivered. 
  • Old & dormant subscribers: Business decisions are sometimes made to send email to a segment of email addresses that have not been sent email in a long time. We recommend you don’t send to these addresses because of the harm it causes to your sending reputation. If you choose to send to old and dormant subscribers, then validate the addresses prior to sending any email. 
  • IP warmup: You want to target your most engaged subscribers during the beginning of an IP warmup. Once you start introducing less engaged subscribers into the warmup process, validate those subscribers. 
  • Business acquisitions: If you acquire another company and you integrate marketing operations, be sure to validate their list, especially if you plan on sending their email from your ESP or sending platform.  

Tips for managing allotments

• It’s best to have real-time or regularly scheduled validations to maintain list quality, but you may need to consider other factors when managing validations to accommodate available allotments. 
  • Use the frequency guidelines above based on your sending schedule.
• Prioritize validations for important times of year or high revenue campaigns.  
• Focus on validating email addresses at your top ten mailbox providers. If Gmail comprises 50% of your list, then you have more to gain by using allotments on Gmail subscribers than at a mailbox provider that is only 1% of your list. 

Record the List Validation baseline metrics displayed below in a spreadsheet. Use historical data for your baseline metrics if available from BriteVerify or other list validation software. If you do not have historical data, establish a baseline by calculating an average of your first five validations completed in Everest directly. Include other metrics important to your business if desired, such as total revenue or average order value.

The list validation metrics in Everest are viewed by clicking View Details on a validated list. Inbox placement metrics can be viewed in Everest within In-Flight>Inbox Placement. Other Delivery and Engagement metrics can be obtained from your ESP or in Everest with an ESP integration and engagement pixel activation.

List Validation 

• Valid % 
• Invalid % 
• Risky % 

Delivery

• Bounce rate 
• Delivery rate 
• Inbox Placement rate 

Engagement 

• Open rate 
• Click rate 

Tracking and analyzing vulnerable segments to list decay helps you make informed decisions about what changes to make to your email program. Causes of list decay include unsubscribes, complaints, people using temporary addresses, people moving jobs or abandoning addresses, and acquiring invalid addresses.

Unsubscribe and complaint rates

Most senders track unsubscribe and complaint rates as they are not only measures of list decay but also provide insights into consent and content effectiveness. Unsubscribe and complaint rates are available from your ESP or sending platform. If you integrated your complaint feedback lops with Everest, you can view complaint data by navigating to Monitoring>Reputation.

1. Perform an analysis of the unsubscribe and complaint rates for each campaign as well as popular segments or subscriber demographics and identify any trends. For example:

• • New subscribers
  • Recent purchasers
  • Subscribers based on geography
  • List source

Your analysis will help uncover campaigns or segments vulnerable to list decay. If you identify vulnerable segments, seek to understand contributing factors. A top cause for unsubscribes and complaints is sending email too frequently. Look at your consent methods, sending frequency, and content to see what improvements can be made.

List validation rates

Another way to identify segments vulnerable to list decay is by performing an analysis of your list validation results in Everest. If you use the Everest List Validation API, you likely have a database results field you can use for the analysis with internal reports.

1. Using a spreadsheet, start recording results for each campaign and the segments validated based on your list validation strategy. 
2. Record the valid, invalid and risky percentages for each campaign or segment.
3. For each campaign sent over the next 90 days, record your segments and validation metrics. 
4. At the end of 90 days, calculate the valid, invalid, and risky percentage averages and sort the list by highest valid percentage. 
5. Note which campaigns or segments have the lowest valid %, highest risky %, or highest invalid %.
   • Segments with a higher risky % or invalid % are more vulnerable to list decay.
6. Compare your validation results to your results completed for unsubscribes and complaints to identify any correlations.

Depending on the segment's characteristics, it may make sense for it to have a higher percentage of risky or invalid addresses than other segments. Use your best judgement to determine if poor or declining results are worth investigating or if it is part of the risk you accept given your business model.

Also look at list sources related to your campaigns or segments for additional insights into list decay. If one list source is producing a large number of risky or invalid addresses and the subscribers rarely engage with your email or buy from you, you may want to try a different source.

1. Implement your list validation strategy, monitor your metrics, and compare the metrics with your baseline results. 

2. Proceed to the advanced list hygiene playbook.

• Everest List Hygiene Playbook: Advanced

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

• Everest Playbooks