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Clean Up Yahoo! eMails By 8/15/2013

 In Email Marketing, Email Marketing News

yahoo announcement about Yahoo! IDsIn June, Yahoo! announced that they would begin to recycle inactive email accounts in an effort to free up thousands of dormant Yahoo! IDs and attract new users.

Good, for Yahoo!

Work for email marketers!

Mid-August Deadline

Yahoo! has already begun to terminate inactive accounts and plans to continue the process so that they can offer the accounts publically by August the 15th.

What to Do Now!

Yahoo! defines a dormant account as one that has not been active for twelve months.

As an email user, if you have a Yahoo! email account and wish to retain it, be certain to login before the deadline to avoid losing it.

As an email marketer, consider your entire email marketing subscribership and how often you have sent campaigns to it. If your entire base has received regular and frequent campaigns over the past twelve months, concern is minimalized.

If…

  • You are an email marketing newbie with a large, un-mailed list compiled over time
  • You have sent infrequent email campaigns or
  • You have sent campaigns to segments of your base, but not the entire base

Then…

This is the time, before the August 15th deadline, to compose a campaign or two to send to your Yahoo! base (which includes @yahoo.com, @ymail.com, @rocketmail.com, @yahoo.fr, @ yahoo.co.uk, etc.).

The consolation is that, before the mid-August deadline, Yahoo! will flag their inactive email addresses and OM3 will hard bounce them, removing them from your active subscriber base. Problem solved!

Email marketers that do not reach out to their Yahoo! base before the mid-August deadline should develop a strategy as soon as possible.

  • Create a special campaign for Yahoo! subscribers (keep it simple)
  • Prioritize the campaigns by subscriber activity: opens, clicks, unopens
  • Review the reports and clean your list accordingly

For the B2C sector, your email marketing subscribers may also be using their Yahoo! addresses to log into their accounts with you. When these inactive Yahoo! accounts become reassigned, the new owners could attempt to access your customer’s account.

During this time of transition, exercise your best judgment. Call OpenMoves if you have questions and concerns.

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