We are in the process at Time on Task of switching to 1 Shopping Cart for our newsletter and auto responder system.  That has meant checking into our list of subscribers and cleaning up the names and information to import to the new system.

I had been thinking that this is a task to do regularly with an email list – check your reports – especially after talking to a new client and discovering she had been using an automated newsletter system for a few years now and never once checked her bounce/delivered reports.  One quick call determined she had many errors, current clients on the bounce list and many old and out of date ones as well.  She also had no idea how many were getting opened every month and if anyone was clicking on the links in her articles. Keeping this list up to date is important for a few main reasons:

1. When you are paying a different fee with different subscriber levels -you will want to ensure that invalid emails are not going out every month – causing your numbers and thus your fees to be higher.
2. Knowing if there are entry errors on your list and that people who should be getting your emails are not.
3. You are investing time and money into creating your newsletter – what if not one soul was reading it? Would you change things around with your content, try something new or maybe even stop altogether and use your time/money elsewhere?

You would not know the answers to these questions if you are not checking your reports.

It is important to take a few minutes and review your bounce list each month and see if anything is out of place. Bring it up to date, fix the errors and get rid of the invalid emails. Sometimes you will come across emails you are uncertain what to do with.

Mickey.... one of my email Subscribers

Which brings me to the point of my post today… Mickey Mouse is on my Newsletter list. Yep – Mickey Mouse. The big-eared one himself… and I am sure it is him because of the email address – mmouse at a Disney domain name (I can’t publish full email addresses you know). An interesting dilemma…

I was going to delete him, but then realized his email was being delivered and opened – I checked my reports, again the importance of checking these reports comes out.

Curiouser and Curiouser…  I think for now I will leave Mickey alone and be happy I have such a celebrity on my list.

What would you do? and more importantly, do you regularly check your reports/list?

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