Yesterday morning I received a bit of a surprise in the form of an email from Tumblr congratulating me on the 9th “birthday” of my blog. I checked and it seems I last posted on Tumblr just over 3 years ago…and only three times ever. In March 2013, I posted a photo from a photo sharing app called Streamzoo – an Instagram alternative that, apparently, wasn’t a good enough alternative and shuttered in 2014. In 2012 I posted a photo from Instagram, but from an account that no longer exists (it was deleted among the wave of privacy concerns about Instagram around that time.)

The fact that I got this notification is a good thing, as it means I’m still using the email address I used to create the Tumblr account – but what about all those accounts I created with previous addresses?

As I dug through websites I hadn’t thought of in years – MySpace, LiveJournal, even Angelfire! – it brought to mind a common issue for the association groups I work with: zombie members. While the use of zombie imagery in reference to old email addresses and web accounts isn’t new, paying attention to those undead records is more relevant than ever for organizations whose email program relies heavily on membership rolls.

Too often when troubleshooting delivery issues, membership organizations completely exclude their active member list from any sort of list hygiene initiatives. The reasoning makes sense on the surface: if someone is an active (often paying!) member of your organization, clearly they want your emails, right? Unfortunately, that often doesn’t take into account some of your most loyal members.

It’s an oft-quoted statistic that 20-30% of email account owners change their email address each year, often due to a change in internet provider or employer. Over the course of 5 years, that equates to a greater than 1 in 3 chance a recipient has changed their email address – but did they tell you? How would you know?

Let’s talk through some of the most common assumptions used to justify why an email address shouldn’t be subject to list hygiene practices and how they can lead to trouble.

1. “They logged into our website.”

This seems like a slam dunk: your website uses email address as username, and the member had to log into their account to renew (or you can see a record of their login.) That definitely means the address is good, right? Nope. Every web browser since Netscape Navigator (and probably before) has been able to save login information so you don’t have to remember those pesky passwords. If members aren’t required to confirm their email address regularly, they have little incentive to change their username (assuming they even realize they’re using the old address).

2. “They attended a conference.”

Like logging into your site, this is a great sign they’re engaged with your organization, but not necessarily with your emails. If the registration for the event took place on your org’s website (that same one with the saved password, above), attendees may be using the same saved information to register. It may seem unlikely, but I’ve worked with many orgs who were unpleasantly surprised by the number of recent event registrants whose information was out of date.

3. “CAN-SPAM says we can send to members no matter what.”

It is true that CAN-SPAM has an exemption for messages deemed to be pertaining to a transaction or ongoing relationship. The FTC has issued some guidelines around this, but there’s still quite a bit of grey area. Sending a message announcing conference registration to your members? Maybe a promotion for a Continuing Ed course for industry professionals? Most experts would tell you these aren’t exempted messages.

Truth be told, whether they are or aren’t exempt is irrelevant to the discussion. CAN-SPAM allows you to send almost any sort of unsolicited email as long as you provide contact info and an unsubscribe method. This is the bare minimum required to comply with the law (and any reputable ESP will require permission.) However, every major email provider has implemented complex spam filtering systems designed to block or reject mail their recipients don’t want.  If their recipients don’t open your emails, or they mark them as spam or unwanted, your mail won’t get delivered. So yes, you may have legal permission to send them email, but that means absolutely zero when it comes to whether your message reaches the inbox.

How can you be sure your members’ information is valid?

While none of the above methods should be considered a reason to keep an email address in your list, there are a few options for confirming addresses that are a bit more reliable.

Send a reconfirmation email

The gold standard of email verification is the confirmation email. Once per year (often at the time of renewal), send an email to the address on file that requires a click on a confirmation link to stay on your list. If someone clicks, you know you’ve got the right person and the right address. If they open but don’t click? That’s a bit more of a grey area. Depending on the language in your email, you may want to keep them around but limit the emails they receive. Non-openers should be suppressed from your email campaigns going forward.

Look for recent opens or clicks

Most orgs are hesitant to require annual confirmation, which is understandable. It’s likely to shrink the size of the email database, a prospect that rarely elicits a thumbs-up from the executive team. In those cases, you can still look for recent activity from the recipient in the form of opens, clicks, and replies. If you have records indicating a recipient opened, clicked on, or replied to an email in the past 12 months, it’s generally a safe bet to keep them around. You may even want to use this in conjunction with the annual confirmation – only those records with no activity have to reconfirm. That will require a bit of additional work, but could pay off in spades if you avoid the loss of legitimate member email addresses.

Conduct an outreach campaign

If a member has no recorded interactions with an email, they’re not dead to you just yet. Many orgs conduct targeted outreach via phone, postcard, or even in-person meetings to get updated information from members. We’ve seen a number of associations have success driving traffic to their online information forms through these offline methods.

Once you’ve gone through these steps, you’ll likely have to decide to suppress some email addresses from your member list to maintain good deliverability. When this happens, remember that removing a member from your email list doesn’t negate their membership – they may still attend events, participate in forums, and engage with your organization. And each of those interactions is another opportunity for you to get updated information from them and bring them back into the email fold.

– BG