Here are 11 steps to help you get ready for doing business online in the coming year. This week, it’s all about cleaning up your e- mail distribution list.

Yes, e-mail is still one of the great ways to stay in communication with existing clients and people who might be interested in your products and services but are not quite ready to buy from you yet.

A recent issue of DM News described how the Eddie Bauer corporate headquarters decided to clearn their email list and their open rates shot up to more than 92%! Most e- mail distributions are lucky to get 20-30%.

Here are 11 steps to help you clean your email list for better open rates and cleaner distribution of your newsletters and announcements:

1) Make a list in Excel with the first name and email address for every bounceback. If you’re using a commercial system, simply export this list for up to the past 6 months.

2) Craft a brief email letter that essentially says you’ve been trying to get your e- letter or e-zine through, but the e-mail keeps bouncing and that the e-mail might be getting caught up in their spam filter.

3) Add a line to that letter that says something like, “Please set your spam filter to allow e-mail from youremail@yourdomain.com or contact your ISP and ask them to whitelist the following IP address XX.XX.XX.XX so that you will receive the information you requested within a timely manner.

4) Contact your ISP or commercial email system to find out the IP address of your email server and replace the XX’s above. In my case, I would get this information from Constant Contact since that is the system I use for this distribution.

5) Send your crafted letter to each of the bounceback e-mail addresses individually…from a system other than how you send your e-zine. For example, I use Constant Contact to send the Tuesday Triplet. But, to send a bounceback letter, I’ll use my regular e-mail client rather than Constant Contact.

6) Make a decision whether to just dump the e-mail address or contact the subscriber by phone if you have a phone number for them.

7) Start another Excel file and audit e-mails that have been sent over the past 3 to 6 months (it’s easier if you do this part every quarter) and make a record of those that did not bounce but were not opened either. Most people will only read 1 of every 3 or 4 editions.

Craft another “very polite” e-mail letter that has the tone of “just checking-in” to see if they have been receiving all of the e-mails. Strongly urge a reply. Make sure to direct them to your archive section. You do have an archive section I hope.

9) Send this e-mail letter from a method other than how you normally send your e- zine from which they are not opening.

10) Let a week or two go by and if you still haven’t received a reply, consider calling them on the phone to find out if those e-mails are getting through. If there’s still no response, and no changes in open rates, you may elect to drop them from your list in the future. But, don’t take them off immediately. There could be a similar spam blocker related issue preventing e-mails from consistently getting through. After all, not all mail servers are setup to send a bounceback.

11) Document in your contact manager system (Goldmine, Act) that you have deleted an e-mail address from your broadcast e-mail system. That way if the person ever calls you on the phone, you can pitch the importance of receiving your e-letter and get them opted-in again.

In Summary, it would be great for me to recommend that you audit your bouncebacks and non-opens every month, but it’s more realistic for me to suggest you take action with this every quarter. And, at absolute least, once a year.

Take action with this now and you’ll have a nice clean list for the beginning of any year or seasonal promotion period.