Maintaining a clean insurance email list helps agencies and brokers improve their online reputation, increase deliverability, reduce complaints and increase conversion rates.

In order to have a clean list, you need to manage bounces, “age” your list, eliminate inactive users and allow subscribers to update information. Here are a few tips on how to do this.

1. Manage bounces

Create a policy in which you remove an email after four or more “soft” bounces. You should also remove all emails after a “hard” bounce. Hard bounces are typically removed by any quality email marketing engine, but you should check your e-mail database to ensure this is being done correctly. Soft bounce policies vary by vendor, but keep a close watch on those bounces as they impact deliverability and reputation.

2. No longer at …

Over time, people change email addresses, leave a company or lose interest in your organization. An increase in your email bounce rate can indicate that you need to increase your list maintenance. You should remove employees, who are no longer working at their former company or who have retired, after every emailing campaign.

3. Eliminate inactive users

Create a policy where you remove contacts if they don't open emails or don't respond to calls to action after a specified period. Or separate these users into multivariate test campaigns to see if you can induce interaction with a completely different approach.

4. Manage subscription

Offer subscribers a chance to change the frequency of emails or update their information. This is often better than a simple opt-out, as recipients may want to limit frequency instead of completely opting out of your campaigns.

Sending information subscribers no longer want can increase spam complaints. Sending emails to inactive email addresses can hurt your reputation with ISPs. Improve delivery, open rates, click-through rates and conversions with proper insurance email marketing list maintenance.