“I see Email being used, by and large, exactly the way I envisioned. In particular, it’s not strictly a work tool or strictly a personal thing. Everybody uses it in different ways, but they use it in a way they find works for them.”- Ray Tomlinson

Email is nothing new to those who have seen the world in the 1990s. Since the internet came into the scene, HotMail began its new venture with email as its system. Since then email use has been growing with Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Rediffmail, Zoho Mail, Outlook, Apple iCloud, AOL Mail, etc. With the use of Email Addresses occurred a problem of their becoming obsolete very soon. As the saying goes, “Change is constant”, so is in the case of a business email address. With email data becoming outdated in such short duration, marketers needed new email addresses of their clients. A procedure is known as “Email Appending” happened and vendors selling it gave marketers a ray of hope.

Email append is a very effective tool for email marketers. It is important to find an authentic email append service provider. Since adding email addresses to a customer’s record within a database immensely betters email marketing metrics, a seasoned email marketer will benefit from this procedure. So what

Giving true figures of data match rate

There are a lot of concerns regarding the data match rate provided by a data append provider. In reality, the data match rate fluctuates somewhere between 35% to 40%. But most companies will fake this to the extent that they get a client to their benefit. A buyer of email append services should know what procedures the vendor is following in order to have a proof of the quality of data he or she receives at the end. It is imperative to know whether the vendor is using string based logic or some complex algorithm. Too many technicalities may confuse the marketers’ understanding, so they should ask a vendor if they can prove the steps by running a test batch.

Household or individual match sets

There are two distinct sets of match basis. One of them is the household match while the other is an individual match. In the case of a household match, the last name of the client and the postal address are matched with the email address. While in during an individual match the full name of the client and the mailing address have to be matched with the email address. Household match batches will give higher match rates than the individual match batches. But the problem here is that the first name is absent which may create massive confusion. Specific industry sectors will need this the household matching procedure.

Creating a Suppression batch

Suppression files need to be created to save the final list from any email address that does not abide by the Can-Spam compliance. So, once a suppression process is run on a list, all the Can-Spam email addresses need to be removed. Some data append providers drive global suppression campaigns that help to wipe out email addresses that cause email bounce backs and email complaint reports, emails whose domain is blacklisted, do-not-email files as per the DMA guidelines, etc. So, the next time you send a welcome email, you are can be sure to get a high deliverability rate.

Knowing the source of the appended list

It is mandatory for an email append service buyer to know about the origin of the appended email address. It will help you to avoid issues while driving emails using the appended list provided by the vendor. If the complaint rate for an appended database is low, it can raise later. So, a buyer needs to know the source of the new email before the older email addresses are removed from their existing database. Later the wrong email address can be included in the suppression list.

Getting rid of bounces

A credible email append service vendor will send welcome emails as a test so that maximum limit of wrong, outdated or incomplete email addresses are checked for bounce rates and can be removed from the final list. So, your vendor should be using this standard procedure without any discussion.

Making sure of the contents of a full append file

A complete email append list should ideally include an email address unquestionably, a gender of the client, his or her birthday, the opt-in email address source and the IP address where the client may have had subscribed. This is the basic requirement. To provide a buyer with all this, an email append provider should get minimum the client’s full name and present mailing address from the buyer.

Finally checking the steps in email appending

Most of the common practices in email appending are clear to you. It begins with the welcome email process, but that does not mean you will not find unscrupulous vendors trying to fool you just by sending welcome emails to your clients.

The basic level will comprise three simple procedures. Depending on the simplicity of the data required and your database the final result can be expected.

The .CSV format

The file format matters a lot as some data may not be accessible in other file formats. The most approving format is the .csv layout that allows lists to be prepared in this order: the first name, then last name, street address, city, state, and zip code.

Database upload and data append

The file needs to upload to the email appending service vendor’s portal. The service provider will instruct you to follow the exact procedure that can help you upload the entire file safely. Then the data append vendor will match your file with their in-house database. A matching algorithm will be run by them through your data file and the missing email addresses will be added to your existing database.

File download

Once the file is ready, you can download the append database through a secure FTP server your email append vendor uses. You can choose to run a suppression program on your own and delete all email addresses that have caused hard bounce rates and the other suppression files. Then roll out welcome campaigns to filter the rest of the junk and cleanse the final list. If you have a huge file, you can leave these steps to your email appending service vendor. The availability of the resources with the service provider determines the time it should take for an email append procedure. Generally, 20 MB size file needs approximately an hours times. This file may comprise around 300k contact records.

Article From: snmarketers.com