Building a contact list is like building a house. There are endless ways to do it, but shoddy and careless workmanship – in a matter of seconds -- will obliterate the work you’ve done. As a business, you can’t afford to blow your reputation through careless email practices. And as an email marketing service, we want you to build a list that’s air-tight, legitimate and filled with your best customers.

List building: red flags
You finally have your list together, but do you know if it’s legitimate? Read more to avoid the common pitfalls of contact lists.

		The list is old or outdated This is a wide time window that ranges from a just a few months to a few years, depending on the nature of your business. According to Return Path, more than 30% of people change email addresses in a single year. This makes it critical to keep your list fresh. Benchmark suggests that you:
		Contact customers frequently so they don’t forget you
		Send customers a “remember me?” email to re-confirm their sign up
		The list is a hand-me-down Suppose you receive a list from a colleague who swears it’s filled with customers waiting for emails from you specifically. You can a) take this person at their word or b) make absolutely certain that the list is legitimate. Benchmark Email suggests that you: Send a double opt-in email for customers to re-confirm their sign up
		The list was created through email harvesting Email harvesting (trolling Websites and newsgroups for email addresses to create your list) is not only highly unethical, it violates the federal CAN-SPAM Act: government-set rules and guidelines for email practices. It’s also extraordinarily easy to get caught. Email harvesters should proceed at their own peril – the axe is dropping fast. A $1 billion lawsuit has been filed against email harvesters and experts say it will definitely make its way into court. If your list was created through email harvesting, Benchmark strongly suggests that you: Start over and build your own list
		The list was created through opt-outs The problem with opt-outs, the practice of “piggybacking” on email subscriptions to other publications (quite often using pre-checked boxes), is not illegal and not considered to be entirely unethical. But it’s a terrible way to build a list. Imagine running a Website that sells antique boat oars. You hammer out an agreement with a very popular sporting site. When the sporting site’s customers sign up to receive emails, they also have the option of checking a box that says they’d like to receive emails on boating. Once that box is checked, you have permission to send those customers emails as well. Here’s the big problem. What are the chances that the customer who checked that box will connect the dots, even hours later, that you – specifically – should be sending them emails? Probably not very good. This is how abuse complaints are made. In Benchmark’s opinion, the opt-out method is far too vague to truly build a good permission list. Benchmark suggests that you: Send a double opt-in email asking them to re-confirm their sign up
		The list was bought rather than cultivated There are thousands of businesses that sell or “rent” lists, but we strongly suggest that you pass this up. Why? Many reasons. The list can be outdated. It could have been harvested. It could contain “honey trap” email addresses that are specifically created to trap spammers. If you buy or rent a list, you can never be sure how it was created. Benchmark suggests that you never buy or rent a list. If you do, Benchmark suggests that you: Start over and create your own list
		Overall, Benchmark strongly suggests that you only use ethical practices and double opt-in methods to build your list. It may take a bit longer than you’d like, but in the end it saves time, money and the reputation of your business.

Single opt-in vs. double opt-in
Single opt-in means your customers signed up or verbally agreed to receive your emails or newsletters. It means what it says – they opted in once. Double opt-in means that customers not only agreed to hear from you, but they also confirmed that in an email. While it’s far easier to build a single opt-in list, the results are often less-than-stellar. Read on to find out why.

Single opt-in headaches

		Customer doesn’t remember signing up Many people receive hundreds of emails a day, both legit and not legit. Even though your customer shook your hand or passed along a business card, thus granting you permission to send them email, there’s no guarantee that the customer will connect those few pleasant moments with the email you’re sending. They may simply delete your email or worse – hit the dreaded Spam Button.
		Someone else (other than the customer) signed up Remember those boxes that ask you to sign up five of your friends to receive emails? This is a sure way to get abuse complaints, even if the person who signed up their friends/family meant well.
		Customers signed up for list via Opt-out This is particularly insidious. This is when you sign up for an email list only to see various (sometimes pre-checked) boxes asking you if you want to also receive emails on various subjects (fly fishing, electronics, you name it). The biggest problem? Many times the customer does not remember signing up for a specific email from you, even if it falls under the category that happily check marked in the not-so-distant past.

Why double opt-in is king

Think of double opt-in as your get out of jail free card. It’s an easy way to protect the reputation of your business.

Double opt-in is a two-step process:

Step 1: A customer signs up or agrees to receive your emails.

Step 2: Customer confirms their sign up in a second (autoresponder) email.

While some customers may not take that second step, the ones that do are telling you (and ISPs) that they are certain that your mail is not spam. Hence, if you later send an email to a double opt-in customer and they shout “Abuse!” or hit the Spam Button, you have air tight, solid proof that you’re in the right.

Cleaning your lists
List hygiene is the practice of keeping your list clean of email addresses that go nowhere. By keeping these emails on your list, you’re wasting your own time and resources. But if you trim your list often, you’ll end up with a list of the best kind: lean, focused and full of your best customers. Here’s a guide to the different kinds of bounced emails and how often you should clean your list.

Soft bounces
Soft bounces are emails that are returned to you, unopened, for various reasons. They may get through later, but they’re not getting through now. These may include:

• Person has changed email accounts (and no longer opens this email)
• Email box is full
• Server is busy

Hard bounces
Hard bounces are emails that come back to you for more final reasons. You can remove these hard bounces in our system by clicking on the CLEAN LISTS tab. The reason some emails “hard bounce” include

• Email account is no longer valid
• Domain no longer exists
• Email address is misspelled
• Email address has syntax errors (for example: joeschmo@msncom or joe.schmoe@msn.com)

No responses (a gray area)
No responses are emails you send that are never opened, but never deleted. They don’t bounce, but they do nothing for your business. There may be many reasons for the lack of response, but as a general rule of thumb you should seriously consider removing these email addresses if you’ve gone through four or five cycles with no response.

Cleaning your list
Benchmark Email gives you the option of cleaning your list. You can do this in the campaign stage, or simply by clicking on the CLEAN LISTS tab. So, how often should you clean your list? It depends on the following factors:

• How big your list is
• What your response rate is
• The number of hard and soft bounces your list generates

Benchmark believes you should clean your list after every campaign you send. Your list may become smaller, but your remaining emails will target the customers that truly want to hear from you.