Hygiene
Email marketing best practices that still hold
Consent, list hygiene, and frequency. Authentication and warmup are email-aisle work. Skip the recycled 'best time to send' trivia.
Consent you can explain
Best practice starts at capture: say what they get, how often, and who you are. Pre-checked boxes are lazy and, in many places, unlawful. A receipt that also opts them into weekly promos without a separate choice will haunt you. Keep the source and timestamp. When someone asks 'why am I on this list,' an answer that names the form is the practice. 'You bought something once' is thin unless the law and the checkout copy agree.
Honor unsubscribes quickly. CAN-SPAM gives a window; mailbox providers and humans expect faster. One-click unsub in the header is now expected for bulk senders at Gmail and Yahoo. That is email-aisle compliance, not a footer design trend.
Consent
A record you can show
Bounces
Remove hard fails
Frequency
A cap you honor
List hygiene
Remove hard bounces immediately. Sunset people who have not opened or clicked in a long window, with a last-chance send if you want, then stop. Role addresses (info@, sales@) bounce and complain. Typos (gmial.com) should be caught at the form. Never import an old dump 'to re-engage' without a confirmed permission story. Re-permission campaigns exist. Blasting silence is not one.
Hygiene protects domain reputation. That reputation is the email aisle: IP, domain, complaint rate, spam traps. A pretty template on a dirty list still dies in spam.
Frequency is a promise, not a hack
Send as often as you promised at signup, or less. Daily can work for a deals site people asked for. Daily from a B2B tool they forgot they installed will get you the spam button. Preference centers beat guessing. If you do not have one, at least separate product updates from promotions with different lists or a real preference.
Ignore universal 'Tuesday at 10am' advice. Your list has a timezone and a habit. Test inside your own data. Best-practice trivia columns exist to fill pages. Your unsubscribe rate after a cadence change is the actual signal.
Authenticate, then ramp
SPF, DKIM, DMARC on the sending domain. Align the from-domain with DKIM. Warm a new domain by sending to engaged people first, then widening. That warmup is email aisle, not a social-account trick. Google's bulk-sender guidance is public in Gmail sender requirements. Read it if you send at volume. Skipping DNS is not a creative choice.
Common questions
Should I buy a list if I immediately offer an unsub?
No. An unsub on a message they never asked for does not turn a cold file into a marketing list. You still trained filters, and you still annoyed people. Organic capture is slower and is the practice.
Is double opt-in required?
In some countries and for some ESPs, yes. Elsewhere it is optional and still useful against fake signups. If you skip it, watch complaint rate. A spike means you needed it.
Related
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