Contacts List - How Real Is Yours?

You may think you have a contact list of E-Mail addresses, numbering say 5000. Does that mean when you send out a Mailing to these addresses, it is going to be delivered to 5000 people? Most likely not!

Depending on the process you followed to gather these E-Mail addresses, your list may consist of any of the below:

• Invalid E-Mail Addresses
• Duplicates
• Bounce-backs

Invalid E-Mail Addresses: If you have customers registering via a form on your website, and the form does not contain appropriate validation code, you may end up with invalid E-Mail addresses. In some cases, they are mistyped, and in others, people just give it intentionally in order to quickly get over the form and access whatever you have on your website that follows the submission - say a white paper download.

Watch out for such invalid addresses in your Contact list. They effectively bring down your list size by that many.

I will tell you more about the other types of 'non-Contacts' tomorrow.