What does "Cleaned" mean in Mailchimp

Mailchimp; you've heard the name before. Arguably the world's most popular email marketing and data management tool, Mailchimp is designed with the user in mind, with a slew of features and customization options to choose from.

Email marketing, with apps such as Mailchimp, has become an essential part of any successful business strategy. It allows businesses to communicate with their customers directly and cost-effectively, providing them with valuable information, promotions and updates.

Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp have made it easy for businesses of all sizes to create and send professional-looking emails to their subscribers.

However, having a large email list is not enough if the list is not clean. A clean email list is crucial for effective email marketing.

In this article, we'll answer the common question, "What does cleaned mean in Mailchimp?" and why it's important for your email marketing efforts.

We'll also discuss how you can keep your email list clean and prevent email addresses from being marked as cleaned. Lastly, we will go over some automations powered by IFTTT that can make cleaning your Mailchimp inbox foolproof.

What is a cleaned status in Mailchimp?

Cleaned status in Mailchimp refers to the status of an email address that has been removed from your email list due to a hard bounce or repeated spam complaints.

When an email address is marked as cleaned in Mailchimp, it means that the email address has been removed from your list and is no longer receiving emails from you. Mailchimp will not attempt to send emails to cleaned addresses again unless they are re-subscribed to your list.

What causes a cleaned status?

A cleaned status is often due to what is known as a "hard bounce." Hard bounces occur when an email is returned to the sender because the email address is invalid or doesn't exist.

A soft bounce, or when an email cannot be delivered due to an issue in the recipient's email server, can also cause problems. When an email address bounces several times, it is marked as a "cleaned" email address in Mailchimp.

Similarly, if a recipient marks your email as spam, it is considered a complaint. If too many complaints are made against your emails, it can damage your sender reputation and impact email deliverability. To prevent this, Mailchimp automatically removes email addresses that have repeatedly marked your emails as spam.

It's important to note that cleaned status is not the same as unsubscribed status. Unsubscribed status means that the recipient has chosen to opt-out of receiving emails from you, while cleaned status is the result of a bounced email or spam complaint.

As a rule of thumb, "cleaned" means that Mailchimp has decided to remove a recipient for a variety of reasons, while "unsubscribed" means that the recipient removed themselves.

When is my mailbox too clean?

If you have a high number of cleaned email addresses in your Mailchimp account, it can impact your email marketing efforts in a few ways:

Reduced deliverability: When you have a large number of cleaned email addresses in your list, it can negatively impact your sender reputation.

A poor sender reputation can lead to emails being marked as spam or blocked by email service providers, resulting in reduced deliverability for your email campaigns.

Decreased engagement: If a significant number of your subscribers are being marked as cleaned, it may indicate that your email content is not resonating with your audience. This can result in decreased engagement with your campaigns, which can ultimately lead to fewer conversions and sales.

Wasted resources: Sending emails to cleaned email addresses is a waste of resources and can negatively impact your email marketing ROI. By focusing efforts to delete cleaned contacts, you can ensure that your resources are being used effectively.

However, it's important to note that having a few cleaned email addresses is not necessarily a bad thing. It's common to have a small percentage of bounces and complaints, and Mailchimp automatically removes these unsubscribed contacts to keep your list healthy.

The key is to maintain a balance between having a clean email list and a list with enough active subscribers to make your email marketing campaigns effective.

In summary, while a clean email list is important, having too many cleaned email addresses in your Mailchimp account can negatively impact your email marketing efforts. Therefore, it's important to regularly monitor and clean your email list to ensure that it remains healthy and productive.

How to prevent email addresses from being marked as cleaned in Mailchimp

Anybody using Mailchimp should be aware of the best practices for maintaining a clean email list, as it can drastically improve the usability of the app. Here are a few tips on how to keep your email list squeaky clean while avoiding too many cleaned contacts or spam complaints.

Implement a double opt-in process: Use a double opt-in process to ensure that subscribers confirm their subscription and provide a valid email address before they receive emails from you. This can help reduce the likelihood of fake or invalid email addresses being added to your list.

Provide valuable content: Send relevant and valuable content to your subscribers to reduce the likelihood of spam complaints. Make sure that your emails are personalized and tailored to the interests of your subscribers.

Use a recognizable "From" name and email address: Use a recognizable "From" name and email address to increase open rates and reduce the likelihood of spam complaints. Make sure that your subscribers can easily recognize who the email is coming from.

Use email authentication: Use email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prove that your emails are legitimate and reduce the likelihood of emails being marked as spam.

Ask for feedback: Ask inactive subscribers for feedback on why they haven't been engaging with your emails and use that feedback to improve your email campaign.

By following these best practices, you can maintain a healthy and engaged email list and prevent too many email addresses from being marked as cleaned in Mailchimp.

Mailchimp automations with IFTTT

There is no doubt that keeping your Mailchimp account clean is an important part of successful email marketing.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to keep up with manually managing and cleaning your list all by hand. The good news is that with the help of IFTTT (If This Then That), you can automate mutliple tasks within Mailchimp to keep your list clean and organized.

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT stands for "If This Then That," and is our free web-based service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called applets.

An applet consists of a trigger (the "if this" part) and an action (the "then that" part). For example, an applet can be created to automatically save Gmail attachments to Google Drive or to turn on the lights when you arrive home.

IFTTT integrates with over 800 services and devices, including social media platforms, productivity tools, smart home devices, marketing tools, and more. Users can create their own applets or browse millions of pre-made ones from other users. IFTTT also has a mobile app, which allows users to control their applets on-the-go.

Top Mailchimp Applets

Verify and Unsubscribe bad email addresses in Mailchimp with TuxMailer.

With this Applet, users can purge unsubscribed email addresses with TuxMailer, which will automatically monitor all email addresses submitted while you work.

Save contacts added to a Google Contacts group as a subscriber to a list in MailChimp

Level up your email marketing strategy with this Applet, which will automatically place anyone added to a Google Contacts group into your Mailchimp list.

Automatically share your MailChimp campaign performance summary to a Slack channel

Hate having to draft complicated marketing reports for higher-ups? With this integration, Mailchimp's custom-made campaign performance summary will be sent to the Slack channel of your choosing.

To access these automations and millions more, try IFTTT today for free!