Ignoring data hygiene can lead to a multitude of issues that can severely impact your email marketing efforts:
1. High Bounce Rates: Email bounces occur when an email cannot be delivered to an address. Frequent bounces indicate poor list quality, which can harm your sender reputation and decrease your deliverability rates.
2. Low Engagement Rates: Engaging with inactive or uninterested recipients skews your metrics and makes it difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns. This can lead to poor decision-making and strategy development.
3. Spam Complaints: If recipients mark your emails as spam, it can negatively impact your sender reputation. High spam complaint rates can lead to emails landing in spam folders rather than the inbox.
4. Increased Unsubscribe Rates: Poor data hygiene often means sending emails to people who no longer wish to receive them. This can result in higher unsubscribe rates, reducing the size and quality of your email list.