Have you ever measured what response rate you get from your email campaigns? Didn't you notice that a small mailing list can give you a high response and a huge list can get a very, very low response rate? That is because it's not the number of emails on your list but the quality of the list that does really matter.

Although sending out magazines and newsletters to millions of addresses through bulk email software is free, you cannot afford to risk your fair name by offending people. Your email address lists should only contain those that signify they want to receive email from you. Otherwise, your unsolicited advertising will be classified as spam mail. Plus, the cleaner your list is, more profits you will get.

Here are some tips how to maintain your mailing list clean and up-to-date:

1. Verify your targeted email list for bad and undeliverable email addresses before you send to it. You can use email validation software to do a list check. You can just search the Internet for an email address verifier tool to choose the one that suits your needs best.

2. Exclude bad email addresses from your list.

3. Manage bounces thoroughly. Not all bounced emails should be deleted from your list. Delete hard bounces. Hard bounce is when recipient mail server rejects your email. Soft bounce is when your email accepted by recipient's mail server but bounced back because of reasons like mail box is full, your message is large than receiving mail server upper limit etc. Try to send the messages a few times to soft bounced email addresses before you delete them. There is chance that the message will be delivered after several attempts.

4. Use double opt-in subscription method. This way you can make sure that the email address is valid and that the subscriber really wants to receive mail from you.

5. Delete unsubscribers. Always provide an easy way to unsubscribe. Before sending an email campaign, do a search for people who unsubscribed and delete them from your database.

6. Provide an option for subscribers to change their email address. Some list management software or services provide a link to your subscriber details and lists he opted for. From there your subscribers can change their email addresses and update their profiles.

7. Don't buy email lists. Most email addresses on those lists are collected by website email extractors and belong to people who didn't hear about you and don't expect any mail from you.

8. Avoid spelling errors. If you manually import your subscribers from your old list manager to the new one or from your helpdesk to your mailing list manager etc, be careful to type the email addresses in the right way.

9. Try to avoid free email accounts. It's a little hard to do though because nowadays people often use a free email account like hotmail.com, yahoo.com although they have their own domains. This is because they don't want to reveal themselves or they might be afraid that the owner of the list might send junk or spam to them.