Are you paying too much for constant contact? (Or whatever Email Service Provider you use)

Email newsletters and eblasts are an important part of golf course marketing.

You know how important – and how hard – it is to write great email subject lines. And you’ve heard that you should segment your email contacts according to interest for best results.

But here’s something you might not be aware of.

You might be paying to keep ‘unsubscribes’ on your email list.

You probably use an Email Service Provider (ESP) like Constant Contact to send email newsletters and eblasts to your members and customers. ESPs provide lots of value, but you might be paying too much for your ESP.

The Sneaky Way Some ESPs Charge Too Much

Many ESPs charge based on how many contacts your list has. A contact is an email address stored in your account.

With some ESPs you are charged for contacts whether they are active, inactive or even unsubscribed.

That’s right! Some ESPs charge you for unsubscribed contacts.

That means you’re paying for literally nothing.

This is why email list cleaning is so important. We call it “contact list hygiene.”

How to Keep Your Email List Lean, Mean, & Clean

Here’s a simple process you only have to run once per year to keep your contact list strong.

Step 1: Delete all the unsubscribed contacts you have on your list.

You can’t email these contacts to try to re-engage them anyway, so you may as well cut the dead weight..

Step 2: Create a segment for contacts that haven’t opened an email in the last 90 days.

These are contacts who may still want to hear from your course, they just haven’t opened your email for whatever reason. Call this segment “Re-Engagement” or something like that.

Step 3: Write a re-engagement email.

A re-engagement email simply asks if the contact would like to keep receiving your emails of if they’d rather be removed from the list.

Step 4: Send the re-engagement email… many times until it’s opened.

Your ESP should be able to re-send an email automatically if your contact fails to act on it. (Here’s a video that shows you how to do it with OnPoint Email Marketing.)

You want to re-send the email every few days experimenting with different times to see if you get better results.

Step 5: Follow-up with a value email.

When a contact opens your re-engagement email and DOES NOT unsubscribe, send them a follow-up email telling them why being on your list is a good thing. Let them know about exclusive green fee specials, pro shop deals, special events – whatever you promote in your newsletters that they’ll want to know about.

Once you’ve sent that email, put those contacts back your general mailing list.

Step 6: Delete new unsubscribes and bounces.

After you’ve sent the re-engagement email 4 times over the course of a week or two delete any contacts that have unsubscribed, bounced, or just haven’t opened the email.

This entire process – all 6 steps – will take you about 20 minutes to complete.

What to Expect

If all goes well, you can expect to delete many contacts. If you’ve got a large list – maybe 10,000+ contacts – you shouldn’t be surprised to see over 1,000 up for deletion.

This can seem scary.

Don’t worry.

Think of it this way. The contacts you’re deleting are the ones telling you they don’t care about your emails. They’re not the ones that will respond to your email marketing and become customers.

The goal is to reduce the number of contacts you have. This will leave you with a more engaged email list and you won’t be wasting money keeping contacts that don’t care about your golf club.