Going over what Fuse checks for when you upload a CSV to your Pipeline.
This article breaks down the importance of email validity checks baked into the Fuse Pipeline CSV upload feature. To learn more about uploading CSVs into your Fuse Pipeline tool, please visit this article.
What Are Email Validity Checks?
When a CSV lead list is uploaded to Pipeline, Fuse automatically checks the validity of emails listed in the CSV. This is a critical step as it allows our system to roughly estimate the quality of your uploaded lead list.
If more than 10% of the emails on your CSV cannot be confirmed as valid, deliverable emails, Fuse will not accept the upload for the sake of your email health.
Our goal is to prevent sending emails to undeliverable addresses, which results in something referred to as a “hard bounce.” “Hard bounces” severely, negatively impact your email reputation.
As well, we want to avoid sending emails to lesser quality leads that are more likely to flag your emails as spam.
Remember: Fuse does this check for you to protect your email reputation!
What is Email Reputation?
Reputation is tracked by email spam blocker tools, blacklist services, and by individual mail servers. It is generally based on the percentage of your sent emails that get hard bounced, filtered to junk mail, or lodged as a spam complaint by the recipient.
Maintaining a good email reputation allows for your sends to be more accepted by all kinds of mail systems. This means your chance of being bounced by firewalls goes down, and your chances of landing directly into leads’ inboxes goes up.
A good reputation can help your messages be seen by more people while also appearing more trustworthy.
How Can a Lead List Impact my Email Reputation?
If a lead list has what we’d consider a high percentage of invalid emails, then even if some of the remaining leads do have valid addresses there is a much higher likelihood that they are poor quality prospects who are more likely to flag your messages as spam.
We don’t want that kind of damage done to your reputation!
How to Ensure the Quality of Your Lead List
There are two easy steps you can take to ensure the quality of your lead list.
Keep your lead list updated.
Is your list too old, with many of the email addresses no longer in use? Best to clean them up and remove them from your CSV.
Old leads are cold leads and cold leads present a much higher risk of lodging spam complaints. Since cold leads don’t expect to hear from you or your agency, they’re more likely to click their reputation-killing “This is spam” button within their email. We don’t want that!
Confirm your lead list sources are reliable.
Did you purchase a lead list from a lead-gathering source? If so, consider their methods. Are they just scraping data?
There are a whole range of issues that can arise from these lead-gathering tactics. Depending on the source of your lead list, there may be a chance those leads have never heard of you and have not put in a request for insurance agencies to contact them. They will likely see your message as spam.
Typically, leads are only looking for insurance for a very short time and have very specific needs. If they requested information and landed on a lead list too long ago, or without any useful context, they might as well be a cold lead as they’re far more likely to report you as a spammer.
When Fuse does these checks for your CSV upload, we want to help you continue growing your agency. By ensuring a quality lead list, you’re putting yourself in the driver’s seat of reaching more prospects and customers with crucial email communication.