Cleaning your subscriber lists ensures campaigns are delivered more effectively and not blocked by any 3rd party Email Service Providers (ESP's) that you have integrated with, such as Mailgun or AWS. Once you have gone through the cleaning process you have an accurate figure for the real amount of subscribers, rather than an overblown list filled with dead email accounts. 


When To Clean Your List


These situations tell you when you need to clean your email list (see below for 3rd party cleaning services).  

  1. You only ever capture emails in REC through purchases or sign up forms and you regularly send campaigns via REC every few months. 
    • The list is clean if you remove subscribers whose email addresses bounce whenever you send a campaign.
    • The list needs to be cleaned if you never removed subscribers whose email addresses bounced.
    • The list needs to be cleaned if you want to start using a 3rd party ESP, such as Mailgun.
  2. You have subscribers in REC but you haven't sent a campaign out for many months. 
    • The list needs to be cleaned.
  3. You collect email addresses from outside REC and want to include these in your campaigns.
    • The list needs to be cleaned.
  4. You have been using a 3rd party service to send emails, such as Mailchimp, and now want to use REC's Email Manager service instead.
    • Clean your existing REC email list if they are not all in your 3rd party list. This means exporting your users from REC.
    • Export your 3rd party subscribed user list and another for your unsubscribed users.
    • Create a new list to import into REC that has users set to be correctly subscribed or unsubscribed, as per the lists created above. 
    • Import it into REC


How To Manage Your Subscriber List(s) In REC 

There is a facility to bulk manage subscriber status by pasting and importing email addresses into REC. You can also perform a level of validation checks on the email addresses which will only allow valid ones, and to assign them into a user group.


  • Go to Admin Centre > Manage Subscribers 
  • Select whether you want to subscribe or unsubscribe the list of email addresses you are going to paste in. 
    • Based on the email address, new users will be added to the database, existing users will be updated with the required status.
  • Tick to validate the email addresses. NB This may take a long time to process.
    • This will check a number of factors to determine whether the email address appears valid, including email format, existence of domain name and MX records. For full cleaning, use a 3rd party cleaning service.
    • Only 1,000 email addresses can be entered at a time via this service because it can take a long time to run, please be patient while it is processing. For faster processing please use a 3rd party list cleaning service (see below for providers).
  • Select a user group into which new users will be put. 
    • Existing users will remain in their existing groups.


LIST CLEANING SERVICES

These are some of the list cleaning services available on the web:


EXAMPLE USES


1. Adding new users from an exhibition


You have picked up 100's of business cards at an exhibition and want to import the email addresses from them. These addresses are bona fide companies with real names in them. You entered them all into a spreadsheet.

  • Copy and paste the email address column from the spreadsheet. 
  • In "Manage Subscribers" select "Subscribe" and tick to validate the list. 
  • Select a pre-defined group for these users to go into, if required. 
  • Paste in the addresses and import them. 


2. Adding users from a list you have on another system that may not have been kept up to date


  • Clean the list using a 3rd party service. This will provide a list of valid and invalid addresses.
  • In "Manage Subscribers" select "Subscribe"
  • Untick to validate the list. 
  • Select a pre-defined group to put these users into, if required.
  • Copy and paste in the valid email addresses
  • Import them.
  • Do not import then invalid addresses


3. Sending an email campaign out to a list in REC which has never been email'd or not for many months.


  • Export the users in Export Manager so you can get their email addresses.
  • In the generated file, only select users who have asked to subscribe previously (i.e. the "send emails" column contains a "1").
  • Clean these users using a 3rd party service. This will provide a list of valid and invalid addresses.
  • In "Manage Subscribers" select "Subscribe"
  • Untick to validate the list. 
  • Select a pre-defined group to put these users into, if required.
  • Copy and paste in the valid email addresses as identified by the cleaning service. 
  • Repeat this again with the invalid email addresses, but select "Unsubscribe" this time.


You will now only send to users that have both been cleaned and have previously subscribed to receive emails from you.

 

4. Combining your REC user list with one from a reliable 3rd party (e.g. Mailchimp) and sending out via REC


  • Follow step 3 above. Your REC list is now clean.
  • In the 3rd party system, export the valid subscribed user list and invalid unsubscribed user list.
  • In "Manage Subscribers" select "Subscribe"
  • Untick to validate the list. 
  • Select a pre-defined group to put these users into, if required.
  • Copy and paste in the valid email addresses as identified by the cleaning service. New users will be added, existing ones ignored.
  • Repeat this again with the invalid email addresses, but select to "Unsubscribe" this time. New users will be added, existing ones updated.