In a recent article by Loren McDonald in the Email Insider was very insightful. This article explains what it calls List Churn which basically means the amount of your list that disappears every year just from simple retention. Over the course of the year Loren estimates that as much as 25% of your list vanishes each year which means that you need to grow your list by more than that amount to really grow your list. It’s like your email list inflation rate. If you don’t grow faster than inflation then you are shrinking.
This list inflation rate is termed the Hurdle Rate by Loren is estimated at ten to twenty five percent per year.
I agree with the rate on the lower end and the one thing I would add to this analysis is that rather than allowing emails to go to the point where they turn into bounces, it is possible to turn inactive email addresses into dormant ones before they get to the bounce stage. This is not easy and requires a lot more attention to detail for email managers, but will decrease the number of bounces over time as well as make for a cleaner list and higher delivery rates.
Resources: Have You Tackled Your List Churn?, Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing List Hygiene
Relevant Tags:email best practices, email list hygiene, email marketing best practices
