Eyeballing Subscriber Lists – An Email List Hygiene Trick

1
(No Transcript)
2
I wrote two articles about email
validation and email verification and how both
processes will help achieve better
deliverability, but after you scrub both ways,
you may not be getting rid of all of the seeds
and/or traps. The one thing that almost all email
marketers forget to do is to eyeball down their
list and look for peculiar emails or anomalies.
Every email list is different and follows its own
pattern. Its quite beautiful actually. I have
been email list cleaning for six years and I have
found that each list has a unique fractal
pattern. A character, if you will, that if looked
at correctly can identify email addresses that do
not belong to the chaos.
3
Here, I will show you how to eyeball down your
list and spot the anomalies so you can remove
them to avoid future threats. Every list is
different. In order to see the pattern, you need
to open it up and sort it alphabetically. You can
do this with Microsoft Excel (only 1 million at a
time) or with TextPad (Windows only) or UltraEdit
for Mac. Find your column and sort via
alphabetically. Its better to do it without
multicolumns so you can see the patterns
properly. If you have to do it with multicolumns,
then move the width of the column as far right as
you can because sometimes emails can be extremely
long. You will need a powerful computer with at
least 8 gigabytes of ram if youre working with
files larger than 1 million. Make sure the sort
A-Z and not the other way around.
4
Right away you will notice your list has some
strange email addresses numerically. Most of the
emails that really dont belong in your list are
located at the top, but not always. Bots and
seeds are mainly the focus here. Your fractal
will not appear at this stage (not until the
as). Start removing any email address that just
doesnt look right. Most real email addresses
have names. Anything without a name could be a
potential threat so its best to remove those
emails. Dont remove numbers with names in it.
Sometimes peoples names are already chosen, so
they have to add numeric characters to it
(example 1212myname1212_at_gmail.com). Start
scrolling down and removing one by one. Its
tiring but you can get through 1 million records
within 1 2 hours by eyeballing down your lists.
5
Example of numeric anomalies 005e8c0f-ca256e4b.00
64564e_at_domino.bigpond.com01001012826.kelly_at_yahoom
ail.com0245778361steveloh_at_rocketmail.com03-apr-2
015aransasnav1_at_yahoo.com050710source2.htm.cdahm_at_j
uno.com08-sep-2015lyndaplmr_at_aol.com093.335.1080.
jcpogi_at_yahoomail.com0ts4qj3vf_at_excite.com0x4146_at_g
mail.com1.1mgeit_at_sbcglobal.netdealkiller-ii.kinja
.com102569979820563yagerrichard_at_yahoomail.com102
614076469691leeromanorealestate_at_gmail.com103.5567
ba99.2edaae4a_at_aol.com103631936463973stnicksparish
_at_gmail.com1078242976-30453_at_excite.com
6
Every list has its own flow. After you finished
with the numeric emails and you start to reach
the alpha, you will notice strange emails that
may look like this a.._at_gmail.com or
asc.._at_gmail.com. Emails do not have two dots in a
row so this is not a good email address. Set a
reminder while you remove these email to do a
search to remove every single email with a dot
dot. You will notice these emails at the
beginning of every letter. At this time, you may
start seeing a seed pattern. Every 100 200
emails or less, you may identify some strange
email addresses with alpha-numeric characters
that do not belong. In example, you could find an
email like this akerto210231_at_gmail.com. After
scrolling down a few more emails, you may see
aswyui829435_at_gmail.com. After a while of removing
these (you should always keep the suppressions),
you will recognize a seed pattern that doesnt
belong.
7
After you have reached the cs, you should have,
by now, seen the fractal pattern. After scrolling
though the list over and over you will notice
long emails that just doesnt seem like they
belong. Some will write those off as coincidence,
but if you check the emails themselves by
googling them, you will notice those email
addresses are public knowledge, meaning someone
posted them on websites or are bounces. The
chances of them being seeds or traps are
extremely high. Test the email by sending one to
it. Ask the subscriber if they are still
interested in receiving your advertisements. You
will be extremely surprised that they will not
respond. There are not that many of these inside
your lists so removing them isnt that big of a
deal for those who are paranoid about losing
subscribers.
8
Now that you have found your beautiful fractal
pattern and are doing your own email list
hygiene, your eyes will start to see funny stuff.
In example, if youre good at pattern watching,
you could stumble upon seeds by familiarities
like this example I found in a recent list I
eyeballed. I found the acronym html was being
placed randomly inside the list. After removing
every single email address and looking at the
suppressions, I found this maternityservices.htm
l.amiradiaz33_at_gmail.comonline_policy.html.rdesmon
d_at_aol.comsenior_center.html.crpelletier1_at_juno.com
soft97385-3.htmlkais10_at_yahoo.com st-catherine-of
-siena-r-c-parish.htmlscatparish_at_verizon.net Its
obvious by this pattern that the emails are
attached somehow to a website with the ending
.html. Its also discernable that these emails
were harvested. This is extremely dangerous and
should be removed as soon as possible. At this
time, if I were you, I would question where this
list came from!
9
Other examples you may find obviously planted or
harvested in your list dave_sienknecht_at_excite.co
mdave-sienknechtdabartel_at_aol.comdave-sienknechtd
ario_at_aol.comdave-sienknechtdharveyd_at_yahoo.comdav
e-sienknechtdhibbett_at_aol.comdave-sienknechtdhills
mn_at_pacbell.netdave-sienknechtdsierra2002_at_yahoo.co
m Four things could be happening here. Either
these emails were harvested from a website and
the website had issues displaying the correct
one, the emails were downloaded incorrectly from
a CRM, the subscriber entered the email more than
once and the system was confused or it could be
traps.
10
Again, each list is different, but its so common
to find a cluster of emails that do not seem to
fit. Here is another example yahoomailneo_at_web160
805.mail.bf1.yahoo.comyahoomailneo_at_web161702.mail
.bf1.yahoo.comyahoomailneo_at_web163605.mail.gq1.yah
oo.comyahoomailneo_at_web181404.mail.ne1.yahoo.com
These emails were the message IDs from the
returning headers. They are not the real email
addresses that you can send to. These emails were
harvested from the internet as I found them on a
website called scamsurvivors.com.
11
Spam fighters, bots and seed planters come up
with all kinds of clever tricks to hide their
emails. As the tides change, so do their tricks
in hiding them. Eyeballing down your lists will
improve your deliverability score but its also
an indication that you have a list that will
cause you extreme problems with spam fighters or
ISPs. Most list hygiene services (except for us
of course) do not offer this kind of service.
Make sure you follow this example to ensure you
do not run into any of these snags that can cause
bounces or worse, blacklistings.
12
(No Transcript)