Email Marketing – Subscriber Number Discrepancy

Have you seen a discrepancy between the number of people subscribed to your list, and the number of emails that are sent out?

There are a couple good reasons for this discrepancy. We’ll discuss both common reasons below. It is important you don’t override this behavior as your email deliverability can suffer if you do.

1. The first reason is that you have more than one ‘list’ of subscribers.
2. The second reason is to comply with the law.

Lists of Subscribers

If you have your subscribers divided into different segments, then you must select which segments receive your emails. If you only select a segment, and not the whole list, then your emails will be delivered only to that segment – not the whole list.

Some email marketing platforms call these groups of subscribers, ‘tags’, dynamic groups, lists, audiences, etc. The important thing is that they are divided into groups according to actions taken on your site. This allows you to personalize the emails and create emails for the specific segment of subscribers.

For example, if you have all your lead-magnet signups in a group called “leads” and all your clients, “clients”, then you might want to send your leads a special email to entice them to purchase. You might want to follow up with the clients with thank you and appreciation emails.

Whatever you do with your groups of subscribers, do NOT delete the user. This is where the second reason for subscribers vs. email discrepancies.

Email List Laws

Most countries have laws similar to the CAN-SPAM law in the USA. In Canada it is the CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Law). The CAN-SPAM law “dictates a range of requirements for emails and other messages from commercial entities…”

Requirements

Emails subject to the law must follow rules regarding subject lines, disclosures, unsubscribe links and headers. Most email marketing platforms help with this endeavor. To comply with the law, these platforms will add or insist or request:

• one click unsubscribe link
• double opt-in emails or direct permission to add a user to your list
• your physical address
• privacy policy that explains how to opt-out

They also will do a few things automatically (unless you overwrite them):

1. add your mailing address to the footer
2. add an unsubscribe (or preferences) link to the footer
3. add a verified domain in the sender field
4. clean the list of broken and insecure emails
5. clean list of inactive members occasionally*

List Cleaning

*Sometimes cleaning the list must be done manually – like with Mailerlite and Mailchimp. Sometimes it is done for you – with ConvertKit and FloDesk. A ‘clean up’ of your list removes people from an email list – while keeping them as a ‘contact’. This is a reason that a discrepancy exists between the contacts in your list and the emails that are sent out on every campaign.

Cleaning Frequency

A list cleanup is a great idea to get a true “Open rate”… remove those who do not often open or click an email. How long you leave inactive users in your list depends on your sales cycle and email frequency.

• if you have a short sales cycle, you can remove users after 3 months of inactivity (bloggers)
• if you have a long sales cycle and only email once a month, leave the users for a year or more (realtors)

Warnings for Email Marketing

1. Never delete your contacts that have unsubscribed! You will want to keep that email around so you don’t accidentally email them again and get marked as spam.
2. Never force a campaign email to go to everyone! Send emails only to those that are actively subscribed.

Conclusion

This post is a result of a frequently asked question by our clients. If you have a question that others would benefit from the answer – please email us.