DEV Community: Saproh

How Often Should You Clean Your Email List? A Data-Backed Answer

Saproh — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:37:42 +0000

A client of mine (a small skincare brand based in a small studio in Bangalore) contacted me in early 2023. Open rates had dramatically dropped from 34% to 11% over 5 months. Her email service provider (ESP) marked her account for a “sending reputation review”. Nothing seemed to have changed in her email content. She was writing, sending and tracking her emails as she used to. But everything seemed to have changed. The only thing that I could identify was that no one seemed to have touched her list of subscribers for nearly two years.

I have noticed recently that many of the conversations that I have with people who manage lists begin with a description of how they have been sending email for years, and then the emails stopped getting results. The system that used to work so well, has suddenly stopped working.

I know that for many people reading this the real question is “How often to clean my list?” and so I will start by answering that question. For most lists the answer is every 3 to 4 months, but, as I said, that is useless answer without any context. To explain why I would like to first explain where that number came from and then provide some examples of where that number is far from correct.

Lists don’t die evenly

It’s not uniform. It stays the same for long periods of time and then drops precipitously. My experience managing lists for various clients has given me ample evidence of this.

For example, the list of B2B customers who signed up for a product demo that I manage loses around 8-10% of the email addresses that can be used to send emails within a year. It’s slow and mostly due to people changing jobs and their work emails no longer being valid. On the other hand, a retail list of home décor customers that I manage for a client loses around 25% of users who used to open emails within 6 months. The reason for this is that half of the sign-ups for the newsletter were obtained by a “spin the wheel to win 10% off” type of popup and those people never intended to subscribe to the newsletter in the first place.

This also means that the “every quarter” advice above is somewhat inapplicable, because the two lists are so very different. The retail list might even need cleaning on a monthly basis during sales periods. But the B2B list mentioned above could easily go five to six months between cleanups without any problems arising.

What actually happens when you don’t clean

This is also something that most people tend to overlook while attempting to provide advice on list cleaning.

As people stop opening your emails, Gmail and Outlook start to get the message that this sender might not be wanted in this particular inbox. This is usually based on small amounts of data such as individual emails being ignored. The more this happens, the more likely your emails are to end up in the spam folder of your subscribers, including the engaged ones. Recently I helped a wellness newsletter get their open rate of engaged subscribers up from 22% to 40%. All they did was remove the 78% of subscribers who had stopped opening their newsletters in the last 6 months. The reason their open rate had dropped so dramatically was that the sender reputation of the newsletter had taken a hit from the large amount of ignored emails from the same addresses.

There’s the spam trap issue too. When an old email address has fallen out of use, it can get “recycled” by an email provider to catch out lists that haven’t been cleaned. This could be within 3 years of an address last having been opened in your list. If you continue to send to old abandoned addresses on your list, you risk them getting “trapped” as spam and you getting added to a shared black list of “suspect” senders. This happened with the wellness client I was working with recently and it took about 6 weeks and lots of emails with their email provider to get removed from the black list.

The 90-180-365 approach I actually use

I’m not a fan of cleaning lists on specific dates. Instead I look at the subscriber activity (or lack of it) over a certain period of time and then apply the relevant action within a roughly specified timeframe.

The real cleanup happens at the 90 day mark. If the person hasn’t opened anything in the last 90 days, they get moved into a new segment where you can then send them a re-engagement email within 90 days. This email can be as simple as “Still want to hear from us?” and then give them options to re-subscribe.

180 days past the 90-day point: send another email to those folks – a bit more direct in nature, but still be honest and clear. Something like: we’ll stop emailing you unless you tell us otherwise.

And then there’s the matter of people who haven’t opened any of your emails for 365 days. It’s time to bid them good riddance. I mean, remove them from your list. Not delete them in a way that you can’t ever reverse (which is what ‘unsubscribing’ implies), just suppress them from future emails. They’re a risk sitting in your account, and they’re not a future customer that you’re protecting.

When I ran the above process on the skincare brand’s list, her list went from 41,000 contacts to 26,000 but her open rate shot back up to 29% within two cycles of the bill. The really important metric to her was that her monthly bill to run her list went down by almost a third – the bulk of email marketing platforms charging by list size, not by engagement.

** Where the “clean every quarter” advice breaks down**

As a special case to the above advice, a small, highly engaged and intentional newsletter list (like my own) might go 6 months or more between cleanings. My list is small enough (2,000 subscribers or so) and I am writing for a highly engaged and intentional group of readers who chose to subscribe because they specifically wanted my writing and not for some discount or promotion. My list just does not decay that quickly.

On the flip side, frequent promotional emails (think daily or near-daily) for an ecommerce company could warrant checking for engagement on a monthly basis during those times. Because the rate at which people will ignore you rises as quickly as it takes to send more emails, you have to be very aware of how subscribers are engaging with your emails during these times.

Some industries do better than others when it comes to retaining subscribers. Those in media and publishing often have subscribers to their newsletters and/or online magazine because they like to read their content. Therefore, lists in these industries tend to retain their subscribers well over time. Others, such as online retailers, have subscribers who were signed up by their customers to receive special offers. The typical lifecycle of such a subscriber is to receive a discount offer, then to unsubscribe to the list after that offer has been redeemed. This type of subscriber behavior is well outside of the normal reader or ‘engaged’ subscriber that most newsletter writers are used to.

A quick note on what “cleaning” doesn’t mean

Cleaning a list off does not mean deleting everyone who has not purchased in the last X amount of time. This type of action would remove people from your list who are engaged readers, but have never made a purchase. The silent subscriber (who has never made a purchase) is someone that you may choose to remove from your list as well. However, this type of person is removed for different reasons than someone who has never made a purchase but is actively engaged with your emails.

It also does not mean guessing. You can use your email service provider’s existing data to filter out inactive subscribers. For example, in Klaviyo, you can create a list of subscribers who last engaged within a date range that you choose. In Mailchimp, you can create a segment of subscribers who last engaged within a specific time frame. The same is true in ActiveCampaign.

So, how often

Check your engagement segments on a monthly basis. Then wait 90 days or so and act on that list (i.e. send a re-engagement campaign and then remove the unresponsive folks from your list). Note that if you are sending high frequency promotional emails then that time frame will likely be shorter.

I still do a light check every month to see how things are going but do a deeper clean-up every 3 months. All in all it’s about 20 minutes of my time each time and my list of subscribers is smaller than it used to be but my open rates and click throughs are better than ever before. And best of all my monthly platform bill has decreased by almost a third. Not because I found some clever way to do things but because I was ignoring the quiet 60% of my subscribers that had stopped listening a long time ago.

For more information, contact us on https://pingovo.com/

Why Businesses Need Digital Solutions to Stay Competitive

Saproh — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:52:26 +0000

In today’s business world, technology is no longer something that only large companies need. Businesses of all sizes are using digital tools to improve their daily operations, connect with customers, and grow more efficiently.

As customer expectations and competition continue to change, having the right digital solutions can help a business stay prepared and competitive.

Digital solutions can include a professional website, mobile application, custom software, cloud-based tools, CRM and ERP systems, and other technologies designed around a company’s specific needs.

What Are Digital Solutions?

Digital solutions are technology-based tools that help businesses manage their work more effectively. They can simplify everyday tasks, organize business information, improve communication, and make it easier to serve customers.

For example, a business may use a CRM system to manage customer information, a website to reach potential customers, or custom software to handle processes that are specific to its operations.

The right solution depends on the business, its goals, and the challenges it wants to solve.

1. Improve Business Efficiency

One of the main reasons businesses invest in digital solutions is to save time and improve efficiency.

Many businesses still handle certain tasks manually, which can take considerable time and increase the chances of errors. Digital tools can help organize these processes and reduce unnecessary repetitive work.

For instance, custom software can be developed according to a company's workflow, allowing employees to manage important tasks from a centralized system. This can make everyday operations more organized and easier to manage.

2. Offer a Better Customer Experience

Customers today expect businesses to be easily accessible and convenient to interact with. A slow website, complicated application, or difficult communication process can affect the overall customer experience.

A well-designed website can help customers quickly find information about products or services. Similarly, a mobile application can provide a convenient way for customers to interact with a business.

Good UI/UX design also makes a difference. When a website or application is simple, clear, and easy to navigate, customers are more likely to have a positive experience.

3. Manage Business Data More Effectively

Every business deals with information, whether it is customer details, sales records, employee information, or business reports.

Managing all this information manually can become difficult as a company grows. Digital systems can help businesses store and organize information in a more structured way.

For example, CRM software can help businesses keep customer information in one place and manage interactions with existing and potential customers. This makes it easier for teams to access the information they need and maintain better customer relationships.

4. Make Business Processes More Organized

As a business grows, managing different departments and processes can become challenging. Using separate systems for different tasks can also make communication and information sharing more difficult.

Business solutions such as ERP systems can help bring different business functions together. Depending on the company's requirements, an ERP system may help manage areas such as finance, inventory, human resources, sales, and other operations.

Having connected systems can make it easier for businesses to monitor their activities and manage their resources.

5. Support Business Growth

Digital solutions should not only solve today's problems; they should also support future growth.

A business may start with a simple system, but its requirements can change as the number of customers, employees, and operations increases. Choosing scalable technology can make it easier to handle this growth.

For example, a business can invest in custom software development that can be updated or expanded when new requirements arise. This provides more flexibility than relying completely on a system that does not fit the company's long-term needs.

6. Improve Accessibility With Cloud Solutions

Cloud technology has made it easier for businesses to access their applications and information from different locations.

This can be particularly useful for businesses with remote employees, multiple offices, or teams that need access to information while working outside the office.

With the right cloud solutions, businesses can create a more flexible working environment while maintaining appropriate access and security controls.

7. Stay Competitive in a Changing Market

Competition is constantly increasing, and businesses need to keep improving the way they work.

A company that provides faster service, easier communication, and a better digital experience can create a stronger impression on customers. Digital solutions can help businesses improve these areas without completely changing their existing operations.

However, adopting technology simply because competitors are using it is not always the right approach. Businesses should first understand their actual requirements and then choose solutions that provide practical value.

Choosing the Right Digital Solution

Every business has different requirements. A small business may need a professional website and a simple customer management system, while a growing company may require custom software, mobile applications, CRM, ERP, or cloud-based solutions.

Before choosing a technology solution, businesses should consider:

What problem does the solution need to solve?
Will it be useful as the business grows?
Can it work with existing systems?
Is it easy for employees and customers to use?
What kind of support will be required after implementation?

Taking time to answer these questions can help businesses make better technology decisions.

How Saproh Can Help

Choosing and implementing the right technology can be challenging, especially when a business is not sure which solution fits its requirements.

Saproh provides custom digital solutions designed to address different business needs. From software and website development to mobile applications, CRM, ERP, cloud solutions, and UI/UX design, businesses can choose solutions based on their specific goals.

Instead of using the same approach for every business, the focus should be on understanding the requirements and building a solution that can provide long-term value.

Conclusion

Digital solutions have become an important part of modern business. They can help companies improve efficiency, manage information, provide better customer experiences, and prepare for future growth.

The goal is not to use every available technology. It is to choose the right tools that solve real business problems and support long-term goals.

With the right digital strategy and technology partner, businesses can improve the way they work, serve their customers better, and stay competitive in an increasingly digital market.

Free vs. Paid Email Verifiers: What You Actually Lose When You Skip the Subscription

Saproh — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 10:41:21 +0000

Three years ago I helped a small candle business from Jaipur prepare for their first big email campaign around Diwali. They had a list of 6,200 email addresses of subscribers that had signed up for the business over two years via their Instagram account, via a popup on their website, and via the offline events the business held. A lot of those paper cards must have had typos in them.

I started with a free email verifier. They are all over the web, and a free solution is often what a small business owner wants to spend first. So, we went with one of the most popular no-signup email verifiers. We would verify 100 addresses at a time, and the report would indicate about 91% of the emails on our list were valid.

It seemed like an adequate number of valid email addresses to send out a campaign of this nature. And send out a campaign we did. However, the resulting bounce rate of 8.14% would have gotten Gmail and Outlook to flag up for suspicious activity around the 5% mark. And indeed, the sending domain would suffer significantly from a poor deliverability rating – down to 3.19% for the next two campaigns I set up for them. Also, the open rate of 22.04% plummeted to a lowly 14.36%. Hard numbers to explain away to a very worried client.

After our email campaign was launched I started verifying emails of the list’s subscribers using paid email verifiers such as ZeroBounce, Bouncer or NeverBounce. The paid tools varied in the percentage of emails that were classified as valid, with 79% being the highest of all email verifiers I’ve tested including the free ones. Pingovo.com’s email verification tool is currently my go-to verification tool for new subscribers and it classifies about 79% of the emails on my list as being safe to send to. As I mentioned earlier, the 91% classification rate of the free email verifiers seemed way too good to be true, and in reality it was.

*Why the numbers don't match *

This led me to a realisation. Free email verifiers don’t do drastically different things to paid ones. They look at syntax, domain information and the existence of mailboxes. It’s the extent to which they test an email address and how often they test it that differs.

As an example of this, free email verifiers almost always mark catch-all domains as valid (i.e. they return a positive for the email address). This is because performing a deeper check to flag catch-all addresses as risky costs the free service money in server pings and in processing time. Paid email verification services on the other hand spend money on server pings and processing time in order to flag catch-all addresses as risky. It is their business model after all.

Greylisting. A topic usually best left to the forums on email deliverability. What I’ve found is that many free email verifiers will not retry a verification that has failed due to greylisting. Instead, they’ll mark the email address as invalid. This can be particularly problematic, as some free email verifiers will even make an educated guess as to the validity of an email address based on the domain alone. Paid email verification services, however, are designed to handle verification attempts that fail due to greylisting. Many of these services will include retry logic, and perform multiple verification attempts over a period of time.

*The spam trap issue nobody warns you about *

This was unknown to me, but apparently is very bad. I did work with a fitness coach a few years back that purchased an email list from a data broker for a candle business. Yes, candle business! The list was quite large but he wanted to reach out to people who had purchased candles online. I warned him of potential spam traps in the list but he didn’t listen. In the end, we did use a tool to verify an email list for him but not a free one. The tool we used, which was Kickbox at the time, flagged up 34 known spam traps in his list of around 6,000. We then removed these addresses from the list and the coach carried out his email campaign. Sending to just a few of these spam traps could have gotten his domain blacklisted from email providers such as Spamhaus and it would have taken months to get his sender reputation back to normal.

A free tool would never catch a spam trap address. Not because the free tool is worse than the paid tool, but because the data to identify spam trap addresses costs real money to license. Therefore, free email verifiers do not have access to spam trap databases.

*What the free tier is actually good for *

I should clarify that there are circumstances in which free email verification is completely sufficient. If you only need to verify a handful of email addresses – i.e., prior to sending a single cold email message – Hunter’s free tier for email verification or Mailtester.com will do just fine. Sure, there are daily limits of free verifications (25-150 depending on the tool), but for the occasional verification of email addresses for occasional cold emails, it’s simply not worth the cost of a paid subscription. For verification of rare use of contact forms on your website, same applies.

Another problem with free email checkers is that they are limited in terms of volume and often lack critical verification steps. In reality, a free email verification service is not going to cut it when you’re sending to thousands of people and your email sender reputation is very important. Most email verification services are priced per credit and then you can send as many emails as you want with that credit. For example, ZeroBounce costs $16 for 2,000 credits (which changes based on volume). So, for a list of under 10,000 emails, you’re looking at spending less than the cost of dinner at a nice restaurant to verify the emails and avoid potential problems with high bounce rates and email service provider account suspensions (which has happened to two of my clients in the past).

*The part people forget: time *

And then there's the time spent. All the time spent after a large email campaign to manually sort through all the engagement reports, to remove people who did not engage and then to warm up a domain that has not been used in a while by sending a series of smaller emails. The total time to get a sender reputation back to normal is usually around 2 weeks. I don't even want to begin to put a value on this type of time.

One thing I’ve noticed about free email verifiers is that they provide little to no additional information to help the user. Paid email verifiers, however, provide detailed information about the email address including: role-based email address, disposable email address, catch-all email address, spam trap, and more. Syntax errors are also found and reported. The information provided by paid email verifiers is invaluable and can help the user to understand where the sign-up form for their list may be failing.

*What I'd actually tell someone starting out *

Free tools are very good at checking the odd email before a cold send. However, for occasional use, the free tier limits (daily caps, etc.) soon become irritating. As I said above, for occasional use, paying for a subscription would not be cost effective. For larger lists, though, the cost of paid verification per email is very low, typically less than the cost of a nice dinner, and a small price to pay to avoid the problems described above. Remember that most paid tools charge by credit, not by subscription. For example, ZeroBounce charges $16 for 2,000 credits (as of the time of writing) which works out at $0.008 per email. If you have a list of less than 10,000 subscribers, the cost of paid verification is likely to be less than the cost of your email service provider suspending your account due to high complaint or bounce rates (as has happened to two clients of mine in the last few months).

As an aside, this small candle business has since then verified every single campaign with Pingovo and their current bounce rate is below 1% - for the cost of 2 candles per campaign.

For more detils visit

https://pingovo.com/

What Is Email Warmup and Does Your Business Really Need It in 2026

Saproh — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 06:50:33 +0000

I have to be clear, however, that delivering mail effectively to inboxes across the internet is a complex issue. While a good deliverability solution can certainly ease the pain of delivering mail and help guarantee that mail is delivered in a timely manner, there is no tool or service that can guarantee that all mail is delivered to the inbox. The copy, list, and sending behavior all have to be good.

Deliverability in 2026 is a simple matter of maintaining trust with the largest mailbox providers. Sure, some clever tricks can be employed temporarily, but in the long run, sending reliable, human and great email is what gets you results.

All I am saying is that for the majority of people building an outbound engine (3 reps or 30), warmup is a relationship that needs to be built up slowly, consistently and with real human effort. There is no magic here.

Lastly, deliverability in 2026 is a straight forward matter of building up and keeping good relations with the big mailbox providers. They are improving at detecting all kinds of tricks that people try to pull. I hope this was of value to you. Warmup in particular is an area where patience will generate the most tangible results.

We run all sorts of campaigns at Pingovo, and I can go into detail as to what’s worked for us and what hasn’t, should you be evaluating warmup tools or just building out your own outbound infrastructure for the first time.
Just leave a comment or send me a message – happy to chat with you about this.

How to Choose an Email Verification Tool: 7 Questions to Ask Before You Buy

Saproh — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:39:56 +0000

How to Choose an Email Verification Tool: 7 Questions to Ask Before You Buy

It was an early Tuesday morning in 2022. Our email was flagged by a subscriber’s email account. I managed the email marketing for a small skincare startup that had imported a list of 18,000 contacts purchased online. We had added them straight to our Klaviyo email marketing platform without checking the list for quality first. By Thursday, the bounce rate had shot up to an alarming 12%. As of Friday, all our campaign emails were being routed to the Gmail subscribers’ spam folders. It took us 6 long weeks to slowly recover our sender’s reputation with a painstaking warm-up campaign. It cost the brand 3 months of steady email revenue in the end.

I was tasked to manage email marketing for a small skincare brand that had just imported a purchased list of about 18,000 contacts straight into Klaviyo. Nobody checked the list for quality before importing it into the email service provider’s system. Within four days the bounce rate had climbed to 12% and Gmail had started to send campaigns sent from the brand to the subscribers’ Gmail addresses to the spam folder. Six weeks were spent rebuilding sender reputation with a warm-up plan that involved sending smaller batches of emails on a regular basis. In total the setup had cost the brand three months of steady email revenue.

So here are the 7 things I ask before you give the guy your credit card details to sign up for an email verification tool for you and your clients.

1. Does it check more than just whether the email is formatted correctly?

The cheapest verification services only check for correct spelling of the email address (so they check for the '@' symbol and the domain name) and then call that verification. However, that is just spell checking, not verification.

Hunter (mentioned in our Workflows post for bounce tracking) has an extremely straightforward verification method that we verified on a 500 person test list of web attendees. On that list of 500 it marked 40 as “risky” to verify and a subsequent low volume test send confirmed 31 of those 40 to bounce for a very high catch rate. A less expensive (albeit re-branded) solution we tested verified the exact same list to be 98% valid for email verification services, and 8% bounced in real email sends a couple of days later. Not false, but also not checking very much.

Ask the vendor if their service performs SMTP-level verification (it actually connects to the email address’s mail server and attempts to verify if the mailbox actually exists). Don’t rely on the salesman’s word – if he starts rambling about how his service is the most advanced on the market and how he can verify emails within a split second, then you know he’s trying to avoid answering your question.

2. How does it handle catch-all domains?

This is one of the most common things that I have seen people get wrong when verifying email addresses.

A catch-all domain is a type of email address management for a domain, which automatically accepts all messages sent to any email address that belongs to that domain. Therefore, when checking an email address on a small company’s domain, even if the email address does not exist, the email server will usually confirm that the email address is valid. That’s why a verification service may flag an email address with a catch-all domain as being uncertain, meaning that even if the service confirms that the email address exists, it is not 100% certain that the email address is valid.

I usually see that a tool flags a catch-all domain with a label like “unverified” or “Catch-all detected”, but this does not necessarily mean that the tool is not responsible for the inaccuracy. I have seen tools like ZeroBounce flagging around 15% of the list as catch-all for a list of small business owners running their own B2B SaaS company’s domain. In contrast, NeverBounce reported only around 2-3% of the same list as catch-all for a different client of mine. However, the actual bounce rate for the campaign running on NeverBounce was higher than expected.

Also important: how does the provider classify catch-all addresses (as outlined above)? Will you be charged for these addresses even though the tool can’t verify them (i.e. confirm that they don’t exist)? Many providers charge the same for a verification of a catch-all address as for a verification of a valid address, which seems unfair given that the tool isn’t even sure whether the address does or doesn’t exist.

3. Can you actually trust the accuracy rate they advertise?

So another big question: How do you know how good it is? Every email validation service advertises 98% to 99% accuracy. It’s really meaningless. As I said before, that is based on testing on the list that they used to set the tool up. Which means that the list that was used to set up the tool could have been garbage.

Ask for the false-positive rate in the email verifier you’re testing. This will give you an idea of how often the tool misidentifies a good email address and flags it for a bounce. In my tests with Hunter’s email verifier, the false-positive rate for email addresses that were marked as “risky” was about 8%. I had the vendor explain the methodology behind this statistic, which I found to be very transparent. Other vendors would only repeat the same 99% number I’d already read on their website.

I’d like to see more detail about how a vendor is measuring the false-positives in their testing data, and have them explain in detail how they arrived at their advertised accuracy numbers. But asking for this detail should not be a dealbreaker.

4. Does it plug into the tools you're already using, without a workaround?

It's a minor detail. But believe me it's so much easier to do this and that when the apps connect to each other.

One e-commerce client using Klaviyo required a tool that had a clean integration with the email marketing platform. We were able to use Bouncer’s Klaviyo integration to verify emails in real time as users signed up for a newsletter on the client’s website. Another e-commerce client using HubSpot required a Debounce integration via Zapier, which was provided in a far more polished way than by the other email validation tools we looked at.

Another way to save a lot of time and effort is to check if the tool verifies email addresses in real time (i.e. as soon as someone submits a form) or in batches (i.e. after you’ve uploaded a list of addresses). The big difference between the two is that, with real time verification, you can stop bad addresses from ever entering your database in the first place. And that’s a very different workflow to the usual cleaning up a mess after it’s happened.

5. How is pricing actually structured, and do unused credits expire?

This is where I've seen clients get genuinely annoyed after the fact.

A lot of email verification tools sell their services in credits. Each credit can verify one email address. Therefore, it’s very important to check how long unused credits will expire. From my experience with such services, some of them can make unused credits expire even in 30 days. That’s why I was quite surprised when I found out that 4,000 of unused credits that I had bought for a nonprofit client in bulk a few months ago for verification of their donors’ email addresses expired as well. It all was buried in the fine print of the pricing page that I hadn’t read thoroughly.

Also worth noting: is a credit spent on an email that is deemed invalid or unknown, or only on an email that verifies to be a valid email address? As noted above, Emailable only charges for confirmed valid email addresses, which seems to me to be the more fair model of sender reputation verification services.

6. What happens to your list after you upload it to them?

It’s a simple point, but a key one to consider when looking at providers – especially when dealing with customer data subject to GDPR or similar regulations.

Many tools have a privacy policy that you should read. Some tools delete your list after a certain time of deletion (e.g. 30 days), others are silent on this point until you ask. Clearout’s support team were very good at answering this question for a European client of mine recently. They gave me a written time line for how long they keep lists uploaded by me for. That was very reassuring to read.

How long will the company keep your list for? This is another aspect of how a company will treat your data. Find out how long they will keep your list for after you have deleted it and write this down in your notes. Look for a company that will delete your list as quickly as possible and treat your data with respect.

7. Will they let you test it on your own messy list before you commit?

A smooth demo of a tool is always shown with example and very clean data. In reality you want to test the list with typos, old addresses, role accounts like sales@, admin@ and accounts that have not been emailed in the past 3 years.

The vast majority of providers now include a small free batch of emails (100-1000 free credits) in their demo sign-up to allow you to test the tool on your actual list, rather than a bland, perfectly-formed ‘demo list’. In the end, I ended up using the free trial on the old donor list for the nonprofit project mentioned above. This identified the instances of catch-all emails as well as role-based email addresses that were being flagged incorrectly.

I’d rather not commit to a service if they won’t allow for a free test (of any size) before purchasing credits. If they only allow for testing after you buy upfront then that’s a good indicator to look elsewhere.

The seven questions I laid out in this article are not difficult to ask. They don’t require a lot of technical knowledge and it’s worth the time to read through them before you purchase a sender reputation management tool. Each tool is going to work better for different businesses depending on factors like list size, how the list was built up, and what email service provider you’re sending from. But reading through these questions before you sign up for a tool is going to save you a lot of grief. As someone who spent a week of their life trying to fix a sender reputation that had somehow fallen apart, trust me on that.

Cold Email Isn't Dead — Bad List Hygiene Is Killing It

Saproh — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:19:28 +0000

Three years ago, I sent a single week’s volume of cold emails to 4,000 contacts who were owners of small firms in Ohio and Indiana that might use accounting software. By Thursday of that week, the sending domain had been added to Spamhaus’s blocklist, and so every email that we sent out for the following 11 days went straight to the recipients’ spam folders. This included all of our support emails, as well as the emails of our CEO to two of his investors in the midst of some tough negotiations.

Most of the posts I have read stating that Cold Email is dead, came from people who ran terrible lists through cold email and thus concluded that cold email itself is terrible. I ran a terrible list of 4,000 through cold email, and now cold email is dead to me too.

Here's the thing I have yet to read about when it comes to cold email - the list was bought before it was cold. The list is already dead before it's cold. We had a list of 4,000 contacts that we paid $49 for on a data marketplace. From what I read, this is where "verified" leads are scraped from sources like old conference badges, LinkedIn exports, and God knows what else. Given that this list of contacts was scraped over a year ago, I wouldn't be surprised if 22% of the contacts on this list bounce on the first two sends of a cold email campaign.

** Why hygiene gets skipped **

The primary reason for not checking for list hygiene for cold emailing is tedious work which in the end costs more money. The initial list cost already was way too high for a bad list. Now you have to spend even more money on verifying the list, which in the end might even be more expensive than buying a new good list. I already explained before that volume-based pricing for cold email sending is a terrible model, because it encourages agencies to send as many emails as possible, instead of focusing on finding and sending to good leads.

Gmail and Outlook email providers are watching what’s happening with your cold email campaign. They don’t care how many cold emails you sent. Instead, they are concerned with what happens after you’ve hit send. Based on the following factors, email providers can determine whether or not to route your emails to the SPAM folder:

A bounce is not just a bad email. Every bounce in a large mailing will be interpreted by Gmail as evidence that the sender does not know who they are mailing. Thus, a large number of bounces can quickly result in your good emails being interpreted as spam and thus being routed to the spam folder.

*What actually happened when we fixed it *

Then I spent a weekend verifying the rest of the list using NeverBounce. In the end 1,340 addresses were found to be invalid or of a type that would be best left untouched. 560 addresses were found to be catch-alls. These are addresses where the mail server is set to accept any email that is sent to it. In these types of situations it is impossible to know if the email that is being sent is being sent to a real person or to a wall. I decided to set these aside for a later date when I would have had a chance to do some more research. In the end 2,100 addresses made it onto the list that I could trust to be valid.

First I removed the 1,340 invalid emails from the list, then I set aside the 560 catch-all addresses and sent them in a separate campaign later. In the end I was left with 2,100 real leads.

Nine days passed after we stopped sending on the domain that got blacklisted. We created a new subdomain, mail.clientdomain.com, and started to warm up the domain with Instantly’s warm-up feature. We started off with about 15 emails per day and gradually increased the amount of emails we sent over the course of three weeks. This slowly built up a track record of good engagement on the domain, and eventually we were able to switch over to using the main domain for our cold email campaigns.

After fixing the domain and warming up the subdomain, the open rate for the emails went up from 11% to 38%, and the reply rate went up from 0.4% to 6.1% (all numbers are averages).

*The one I still find embarrassing *

Buried in the original 4,000 contacts, we found three email addresses that actually turned out to be spam traps. As it turns out, email addresses left abandoned for years (or even never actually used in the first place) can, at some point, be reactivated by a mailbox provider. This way, they can test senders who don’t manage their lists properly. And they look exactly like a legitimate email address to you. The only difference is that they don’t get deleted immediately when you send them an email. Instead, they just sit there. And then, there’s the matter of actually identifying them as such.

They don’t bounce, so you have to manually verify them using specialized tools. (In our case, a verification tool flagged the domains of these three email addresses as “high risk”. Upon manual verification, we were able to find out that two of them belonged to a now-defunct company (which had shut down 4 years prior to that) and that the third one belonged to a conference attendee list (from a conference that hadn’t taken place in 8 years).)

The three emails were located within the 4,000 contacts of the list. It wasn’t until I manually checked each of the “High Risk” domains for verification that I discovered that two of the email addresses belonged to a company that went out of business four years prior. The third email address belonged to a conference attendee list for an event that was held three years prior. Again, none of the information above would have been visible in the spreadsheet of contacts that I was provided with prior to verification of the list of contacts.

This still gets my goat. With all of the hard work and many hours put in verifying bounces, warming up a domain, monitoring open rates, etc., it can all be for naught because of 3 or so undetected spam traps.

*The part people don't want to hear *

I also want to admit that list cleaning is not a fun activity to go through. At first glance, it may seem that the more the better (i.e., the bigger list of contacts, the better), but in reality, there’s nothing more frustrating than watching your list of contacts dwindling. As I was explaining to a founder of a small logistics software company that I worked with last year, cleaning a list of contacts is not the most productive activity. While you’re busy verifying the contacts on your list and watching your list of contacts dwindle, you may get the feeling that you’re just throwing your work away. This founder actually got frustrated with me over this exact issue. He had bought a 12,000-name list and wanted to send out a campaign to all of them immediately. I told him that he needed to verify the contacts on his list first, but he didn’t want to wait. So, he sent out the campaign to the full list of contacts on a domain that was only six weeks old.

Three days later his main sending domain, used for business emails, would be flagged by Google as sending spam and end up in the spam folder of every Gmail, Outlook.com etc user. It would take him 5 weeks to sort out the relations with a few key prospects and get his normal business emails delivered again. The biggest problem for him was not knowing whether his normal emails were being delivered or not.

That is the actual cost of sending a cold email campaign while not having done proper list hygiene. Instead of your campaign underperforming, your entire email stream is affected negatively by your burned domain.

*What good hygiene actually looks like *

Again, this is not rocket science and does not require any specific tools. First of all, verify your purchased or scraped list with tools like NeverBounce, Bouncer or ZeroBounce before you send out any emails. Next to that, make sure to separate catch-all addresses from the rest of your list and send them out in a subsequent and more careful email campaign. Last but not least, make sure to warm up your new domain or subdomain gradually before you send out high volumes of email. And last but not least, keep an eye on engagement metrics after the launch of your campaign. If your open rates are low and bounces start to rise during your campaign, stop it and re-check your list.

After 8 months with a clean list, lots of people will have left their jobs and thus won’t be on your list of contacts anymore. In fact, a list that was 95% valid 8 months ago will likely be around 80% valid today, due to ‘churn’ (the normal flow of people leaving companies, domains expiring, old inboxes being shut down, etc). That’s why it’s so important to re-verify lists that you have sat on for long periods of time.

*So is cold email actually dead? *

No, cold email is not dead, and I really don’t think the posts saying that actually believe that. What is dying is the type of cold email where people buy the cheapest list, send out emails from a recently set up domain (no warm up) and then blast out as many emails as possible in the hope that volume will make up for the lack of accuracy. This type of cold email has always been a dying breed and inbox providers are getting better and better at catching out these types of emails before they can cause too much damage.

Ultimately, it all works for me. I run cold email campaigns all the time and they perform great. Why? Because I’m spending so much time on creating and managing the list of email addresses that I could care less about crafting the perfect subject line. I know that in the end, it really doesn’t matter, because if the email never even makes it into the inbox of the recipient in the first place, then all that effort went down the drain.

Why 20% of Your Email List Is Silently Killing Your Sender Reputation

Saproh — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:24:35 +0000

It was three months ago when a D2C skincare brand got in touch with me as their revenue from email was plummeting by almost 40% in the last quarter. Everything seemed to be status quo for them as far as their setup was concerned, i.e., same ESP, same email templates, same frequency of emails. But their open rates had quietly slipped away in the last ten weeks.

What I found was rather obvious once the data was pulled: 22% of their list hadn’t opened an email in over 400 days, with some of these email addresses having not been touched in over two years (i.e. since a Black Friday promotion a couple of years prior).

So, for all of you out there chasing the big list and treating it like it is an asset to your company, you can stop. It is not. A big list of emails becomes a liability for your company the moment it stops engaging with your emails. And, the minute it stops engaging, Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook will all figure that out way before you do.

What's actually happening behind the scenes

Mailbox providers don’t actually read your emails to decide whether or not to send them to the inbox or spam folder. They rely on behavior to determine whether or not an email should be classified as spam. So, even if a chunk of your list never opens your emails, never clicks on any links, and never even scrolls to read the body copy, that behavior is logged against your sending domain and your IP address. It doesn’t matter if the other people on your list love you and open your emails every time. The behavior of the unengaged people on your list can have a negative impact on your domain’s reputation.

These 20% of silent subscribers actually matter for your sender reputation. They don’t matter for your personal, egotistical desire to get emails out to everyone. What matters for your deliverability is that 80% of subscribers who love you to get email from you. In aggregate, their engagement (or lack thereof) is what actually gets measured and decides the deliverability of your emails.

This problem is afflicting a wide variety of companies: software as a service, online retailers, local real estate agents. The commonality is that every single one of them is treating their entire list the same way. They’re sending to everyone on their list, the unengaged portion of the list isn’t opening emails, and Gmail’s Postmaster Tools are quietly eroding their domain reputation score over time. Then, the engaged portion of the list gets sent to Promotions or even to Spam.

For example, when I worked with a D2C skincare brand their email open rates had dropped almost 40% in a single quarter. Everything looked right, they were using the same ESP, sending at the same frequency, with similar subject lines and content. However, three months of audit and cleanup later their open rates had shot up to 34% on the exact same content, sender and subject line style. The main change was the removal of silent subscribers who had been getting emails for years but never opened, engaged or unsubscribed.

Why “just email more” makes it worse, not better.

Most marketers will send more emails in an attempt to try and get better open rates. But almost always this will have the complete opposite effect.

The negative signal from each of the emails that are being sent to unengaged users will only serve to continue to indicate to Gmail, Yahoo and the others that this sender’s content is not wanted. It’s similar to someone knocking on a door where there is no answer. The louder that the person knocking continues to knock on the door, the more clear it will become to any others who might be passing by that no one is home at that address and therefore there must be no interest in any content that might be coming from that address.

We also worked with a B2B SaaS company. The initial content in the onboarding sequence of emails wasn’t generating the desired conversions. So instead of tweaking the copy, the decision was made to add three more emails to the sequence. However, engagement continued to drop off. It wasn’t until we cut the sequence back down to two emails and then added a re-engagement filter, before the recipient was added to the sequence in the first place, that conversion rates shot up by 18%.

The part that actually matters for deliverability, not just vanity metrics

Why Sender Reputation Is Relevant To Deliverability & To SEO / How Search & Email Correlate Each Other, Especially For New Brands

For any marketer that is utilizing outbound cold email as part of a broader growth strategy for their company, the implications for their overall sender reputation of having a poor email deliverability reputation for their cold email campaigns (which typically are running off of a subdomain for said campaign) could have unintended consequences and impact their company's overall domain reputation. In other words, having a poor sender reputation for your cold email campaigns could impact the deliverability of your regular email campaigns that are coming from the same root domain.

How to actually find your silent 20%

First, most ESPs (email service providers) make it very hard to see who your silent 20% are. Here’s what I actually check for when I audit a list for a client.

First, instead of last-send date I look at last-open date. There’s a huge difference between sending 40 emails to someone and them having read 40 emails. The latter is much more desirable than the former. So I segment my list by last-open date.

As I said above, engagement in almost every audit that I conduct is lowest in list segments acquired through paid lead magnets or contest giveaways (such as “win a $500 gift card” to a furniture online store). The following chart from an audit of the email list of a furniture online store shows that the open rate of 18 month old emails sent to subscribers acquired through paid lead magnets is a mere 3% while the open rate of emails sent to subscribers who acquired their subscription through the purchase of a competing product is 41%.

Third, the free email providers (Yahoo, AOL, etc.) usually have a much higher number of dormant/abandoned email addresses than Gmail users or business email addresses. People tend to go through a lot of free email addresses as they lose or throw them away.

What to actually do once you've found them

Note that don't delete the people who haven't opened in 6 months. You throw away a bunch of potential subscribers who are in a slow engagement cycle (e.g. B2B buyers with long purchase cycles, or a seasonal business).

Instead of deleting people who haven’t opened in 6 months, I run every client through a two-step process for dealing with silent subscribers. Step one is to send a re-engagement email (i.e. not another generic “we miss you” type email) that actually gives the subscriber a reason to come back and engage with your content again. For example, with the skincare brand I mentioned earlier, we created a re-engagement email that was very short and very honest, and essentially asked the subscriber if they wanted us to stop emailing them. This email got a 9% click rate from the silent subscribers (i.e. people who had been silent for over a year), which proves to me that people actually do notice when you haven’t emailed them in a while, and that all it takes is a tiny bit of effort to get them to engage with your content again.

Step 2 – Suppress quiet subscribers. Suppressing senders is a feature offered by email service providers. This feature will mark senders that do not receive engagement from their list to not send emails to that list anymore. This list will not get deleted from your account though, so in case that quiet subscriber comes back through a purchase or other channel to your site, all of a sudden your emails will start getting delivered again because the negative reputation that was building up on that quiet subscriber’s account will stop.

This particular client had a rather tumultuous situation with his email marketing previously. But after having us audit his list and having us create the proper re-engagement campaigns for silent subscribers, the sender’s reputation had bounced back to “High” according to Google’s Postmaster Tools within 5 weeks. And as an added bonus, his revenues had started to climb back up to previous levels even before his list had a chance to grow back to previous sizes.

A smaller list that lands in the inbox will always outperform a bigger list that lands in spam. This is because deliverability is determined by behavior on the part of the recipient (opening, reading, clicking), not by the size of the list. As such, a 40,000 person list with 70% engagement will always outperform a 200,000 person list

This is one of the hardest points of view for founders and for marketing teams in general to adopt, as list size is a very, very strong vanity metric. But deliverability, as with search engines, doesn’t care about your list size. It cares about your behavior. In other words, 40,000 people that engage in high volumes (70%+ open rates) will outperform a 200,000 person list that only engages in low volumes (15%+ open rates) in terms of revenue, but also in terms of how your mailbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) will treat your domain.

If you manage cold outreach, transactional email, or high-volume campaigns and you’re seeing unexplained drops in open rates or deliverability, then the first place you need to look is at your list, and specifically at the quiet 20% of subscribers who are doing nothing and slowly but surely getting Gmail to recognize that nobody wants to hear from you.

At Pingovo, we like to run a check of where the silent subscribers are hiding, and the impact on your deliverability. This is often something that gets misdiagnosed, and so too much time is wasted on improving the content, before addressing the underlying list health issues. Just like repainting a house with a leaking roof, the paint job won’t make a difference until you’ve sorted out the foundation! Want a quick no-fluff audit on where your silent subscribers are hiding in your list and how they are impacting your deliverability? We can provide that for you in a diagnostic audit on www.pingovo.com.

AI Agents vs Traditional Software: What Businesses Need to Know in 2026

Saproh — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:11:55 +0000

What Is Traditional Software?
Traditional software generally follows predefined rules and workflows.
A user provides an input → the software processes it according to programmed logic → the software produces an output.
For example, a CRM system can automatically assign a lead to a salesperson based on predefined conditions. An accounting application can calculate invoices according to programmed formulas.

Traditional software is highly effective when processes are predictable and clearly defined.
Key characteristics include:
Rule-based workflows
Predictable outputs
Structured data processing
Fixed business logic
High reliability for repetitive tasks
Limited ability to adapt independently

What Are AI Agents?
AI agents are software systems designed to understand goals, reason through tasks, use tools, access information, and take actions with a certain degree of autonomy.
Instead of simply following one fixed workflow, an AI agent can determine the steps needed to accomplish a goal.
For example, an AI-powered sales agent could:
Receive a new customer inquiry
Understand the customer's requirements
Search relevant product information
Prepare a personalized response
Update the CRM
Schedule a follow-up
Escalate the conversation to a human when necessary
This makes AI agent development particularly interesting for complex and dynamic business processes.

AI Agents vs Traditional Software: Key Differences
Factor
Traditional Software
AI Agents
Logic
Predefined rules
Goal-oriented reasoning
Adaptability
Limited
Higher
Decision-making
Rule-based
AI-assisted
Workflow
Fixed
Dynamic
Data
Mostly structured
Structured + unstructured
Human intervention
Often required
Can be reduced
Automation
Task-based
Goal-based
Complexity
Best for predictable processes
Useful for dynamic processes

The important point is that AI agents aren't necessarily replacements for traditional software.
In many cases, the best solution is a combination of both.

Where Traditional Software Still Wins
Traditional software remains extremely valuable.
For processes requiring accuracy, consistency, security, and predictable outcomes, traditional applications can be the better choice.
Examples include:
Payroll processing
Financial calculations
Inventory management
Billing systems
Database management
Transaction processing
Compliance workflows
If a process follows clear rules, there may be little reason to introduce an autonomous AI system.

Where AI Agents Can Create an Advantage
AI agents become more valuable when tasks require understanding, reasoning, context, or interaction.
Potential use cases include:
Customer Support
AI agents can understand customer questions, retrieve information, and provide personalized responses.
Sales
AI agents can qualify leads, research prospects, update CRM records, and automate follow-ups.
Business Operations
Agents can coordinate tasks across multiple software systems and help employees automate repetitive workflows.
Research & Analysis
AI agents can collect information, summarize documents, compare data, and generate insights.
Software Development
AI coding agents can assist developers with debugging, documentation, testing, and code generation.

The Rise of Agentic Automation
One of the biggest shifts in business automation is moving from simple task automation toward agentic automation.
Traditional automation might say:
"When X happens, perform Y."
An AI agent can work more like:
"Here is the objective. Determine the appropriate steps and complete the task."
This difference can become significant when businesses have workflows involving multiple systems, unstructured information, and changing conditions.

AI Agents Still Need Guardrails
Despite their potential, businesses shouldn't treat AI agents as completely autonomous employees.
AI systems can make mistakes, misunderstand instructions, generate incorrect information, or take inappropriate actions if they aren't properly designed.
Businesses should consider:
Human oversight
Access controls
Data privacy
Security
Monitoring
Audit trails
Clear permissions
Reliable data sources
Testing and evaluation
A successful AI software solution isn't simply about adding an AI model. It requires thoughtful architecture, integrations, security, and business logic.

The Future: AI + Traditional Software
The future of enterprise software is unlikely to be simply AI agents vs traditional software.
Instead, we're likely to see both working together.
Traditional software can provide:
Infrastructure + databases + business rules + security
while AI agents can provide:
Reasoning + natural language interaction + decision support + flexible automation
Together, they can create more intelligent and adaptable business software solutions.

Final Thoughts
AI agents are changing how businesses think about software.
Traditional applications were primarily designed to execute instructions.
AI agents are increasingly being designed to understand goals, make decisions, and take actions.
The businesses that benefit most won't necessarily be those that adopt the most AI. They'll be the ones that identify the right problems and use the right technology to solve them.
The future of software isn't necessarily AI replacing traditional software. It's intelligent systems working alongside reliable software infrastructure to create smarter, faster, and more scalable businesses.

Email Marketing Trends in 2026: How AI, Automation, and Personalization Are Changing Customer Engagement

Saproh — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:28:00 +0000

I recently had a conversation with the founder of a small skincare brand while she was going through her email dashboard. I had promised her a while back that we would go through her email reports, and as we were going through them, she kept apologizing for her numbers. They weren’t terrible, and in fact her open rate was 38% which is actually pretty solid for the skincare industry. However, she had read somewhere that with the use of AI, email marketing would solve all of her problems and she felt like she was falling behind because she wasn’t using it properly. That conversation ended up being the reason I wrote this post.

My previous article about trends in email marketing also related to the same topic and helped to develop my thoughts about email marketing trends in 2026, which are less about doing more and more about having better judgment and doing less but with better results. Most of the trends, which are described in the articles, are related to the use of more tools.

AI Isn’t Writing Subject Lines Anymore. It’s Making the Calls.

I remember about two years ago AI in email marketing could be written as a service to assist writers in composing emails. Later those programs evolved to generate subject lines. And now, AI decides what to write in an email and even if to send it.

The second difference is that today’s AI is not just deciding on the wording of a particular email but is also deciding on the sequence of emails. As an example, a home goods brand that I am consulting for had a traditional abandon browser flow in place. The old flow consisted of three emails sent out on a fixed schedule (i.e. one hour after abandonment, one day after abandonment, and three days after abandonment). These rules were based on simple if/then logic and anyone could have set up such a flow in an afternoon.

We ran the browse-abandonment campaign using an automation tool, that uses the same logic as for sending email campaigns to individual customers. Instead of fixed 1-hour, 24-hours and 72-hours after add-to-browse-list, the campaign was now triggered by various events: opening on mobile at 11pm at night, clicking on a link to product page, or clicking on link to product details page, and so on. Some of the settings for the automation tool were not optimal on the first pass, for example, the tool kept sending out discount codes to returning customers who didn’t need them. But after fine tuning the settings, the resulting campaign had revenue per recipient of around 18% above the campaign with fixed settings.

That’s the actual shift going on, less AI writing out your emails and more AI deciding when the right time is to send out that email to the right person.

Personalization Got Quieter, and Honestly, That’s Better

Personalization used to mean simple things like putting the first name of the customer in the subject line of an email and then later on other personalizing elements would be added to create a very ‘personal’ experience for the customer. Today, personalization has gotten quieter. No longer do emails shout out ‘WE PICKED THESE JUST FOR YOU, SARAH’. In fact, today, personalization has become so much a part of most of the emails that are sent that it’s become almost invisible.

So when I say that “people got tired of being told they were being personalized to”, I mean that being told that you were being personalized to in order to be brought into the fold of the personalized world started to feel like a sales ploy. In other words, it was no longer seen as being personalized to, but as being treated in a very particular way in order to try and get the customer to part with their hard earned cash.

Recently I’ve been working with a small independent bookstore and we’ve tried a few different ways of using information about a customer’s previous purchases in order to suggest other books to them. Initially we made a big deal of the fact that the books were being recommended to customers on the basis of information about their previous purchases, and we used a lot of Performative Language in order to draw attention to the fact that the recommendations were being provided on the basis of the customers’ previous behavior. However, this approach had a number of problems, not least the fact that it meant that customers were being subjected to a lot of similar messaging, which in turn meant that the overall impact of the emails was to make customers feel as though they were being bombarded by emails. In the end, therefore, we took a step back from the approach and started again from scratch.

This time, instead of making a big deal of the fact that the books were being recommended on the basis of customers’ previous behavior, we simply included a few books in the email and hoped that they would be of interest to the customers who received it. In the event, the approach worked extremely well. In fact, so well that the click-through rate on the books that had been suggested to customers on the basis of their previous behavior was nearly double that of the similar block of books that had been included in previous emails and had been recommended to customers on the basis of their previous behavior using a lot of Performative Language.

In other words, customers didn’t need to be told that the books were being recommended to them on the basis of their previous behavior in order to be able to tell that was the case. In fact, the less said about the matter the better. Which is perhaps the main point that I am trying to make in this section. Sometimes the best personalization is that which goes unnoticed by the customer. It is sufficient that they feel that the brand in question has been paying attention to them, without any need for further explanation.

Nobody Wants to Hand Over Data for Free Anymore, So Brands Are Asking Nicely

The privacy landscape is changing fast and recently Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection has been the major factor in the recent changes to tracking in email. On top of that, there are now even stricter regional data laws that are having a profound impact on email tracking and even open rate reporting. As a result, by 2026, many brands will have given up on trying to report on open rates and instead will report on click through rates and even most importantly revenue.

As mentioned earlier, Zero-party data is not a new technical trend but actually a clever way of brands admitting that guessing is expensive and that asking is free. To get the best possible data, brands now ask for it in the most convenient way possible in return for useful information and services. The illustration above shows how a simple preference quiz was added to the welcome sequence of the coffee subscription brand’s email campaign. The two simple questions asked in the preference quiz are about the subscriber’s preference for roast strength and how often they drink coffee.

This simple preference quiz enables the brand to skip weeks of guessing and to send the most relevant recommendations from email one onwards. Day-30 retention for new subscribers has increased noticeably and the founder explained why she thought it worked so well by saying: “We stopped trying to be clever and just asked.”

Zero-party data isn’t a technical trend. It’s brands finally admitting that guessing is expensive and asking people for the information they need for truly relevant experiences is free.

The Inbox Is Starting to Act Like a Tiny App

Interactive email within the inbox that lets customers do things like reschedule a class or put products in a shopping basket within the email (without them having to leave the inbox) used to be the reserve of big retailers with big development budgets. But lately, with more email clients supporting things like forms, text input fields and more sophisticated things like calculating total cost of things in a shopping basket, interactive email is becoming mainstream and is even being used by smaller brands and retailers.

This shows how even very small businesses can implement simple interactive emails in order to make rescheduling of classes in their studios as easy as possible for their members. In fact, this has such an obvious impact that the no-shows at classes for this studio have decreased. This is because rescheduling of classes has ceased to be such a chore for its members that they avoid doing it.

Automation Is Starting to Talk to Other Automation

Previously, email, SMS, and app notifications had been run as separate systems, targeting the same customers. Now, in 2026, more and more brands are connecting the channels up together so that, rather than competing with each other, and sending out identical messages, the different channels of communication are working in harmony to provide the customer with the best possible service.

Behavior-based communication. Or simply putting automation to use. Recently, I was able to observe this in action with a subscription coffee provider. Instead of sending abandoned cart reminders via email, they were now being sent via SMS. Why? The system in question had been analyzing the previous behavior of customers in relation to email and SMS messages. It then used this information to decide which channel of communication was the best to use in individual cases. The result: a huge reduction in the number of messages being sent. And, unlike with most efforts to reduce the number of messages being sent, the number of unsubscribes even decreased.

Catching People Before They Quietly Disappear

Early warning signs that people are drifting away, and stopping them before they completely disappear from view, has become a significant part of my work. As I mentioned earlier, silent customers are much worse than unsubscribed ones, because at least with an unsubscribe you know something has happened.

One pet supplies retailer that I worked with recently added a check-in message to their welcome sequence. It flagged up customers who were showing a dip in open rates and an increase in the time between purchases, weeks before they would have appeared on a report of lapsed subscribers. It was a simple two-question preference quiz to determine whether or not they were still looking for supplies for their pets, and if so, how their needs may have changed. There was an easy way for customers to update their preferences. The responses to this check-in message were far higher than for their usual win-back campaign, and a number of the customers who had responded went on to make a purchase within a month of receiving the message. Importantly, though, none of them had been offered a discount. One important thing to note about re-engaging inactive subscribers is that you have to act on weak signals rather than waiting for someone to drop off of your list completely. By the time someone hasn’t opened an email in 90 days or so, it’s often too late for an easy re-engagement.

Where I’d Actually Slow Down

This reminds me of something that happened last year where I was using an AI tool to generate subject lines for a client’s holiday sale campaign. The subject lines were tested individually and all of them performed well. But as the days went by and the various reminder campaigns were sent, I noticed that the subject lines all had the same rhythm and were using the same types of language to create a sense of urgency. “Don’t miss out”, “Last chance” etc. It wasn’t until I got a few comments from subscribers (half-jokingly) asking if a robot had taken over the newsletter that I realized what was going on. It was as if the subject lines had been written by the same person but with slightly different wording. In the end it wasn’t a problem but it was a close call and it taught me an important lesson about using AI tools to automate aspects of your campaign. While they are great at optimizing individual emails, they are terrible at picking up on the bigger patterns and nuances that are going on in the rest of your campaign. And so, while they can help to free up some time, they are not a substitute for human common sense and the ability to make decisions based on your brand’s values and personality. Brand voice still needs a human ear.

Nothing too earth shattering here, just be careful as with any automation. The main point to note is that single email generation is simple for AI but a sequence of emails is a different story. It’s easy for the AI to miss out key points and things can go unnoticed until a human comes along to review. Therefore, brand voice needs to be checked by a human.

What This Actually Means If You’re Running Campaigns Right Now

None of this requires huge sums of money or a total reworking of the email programs already in place. All of this is starting to work its way into the various flows of email already in place. This means that rather than focusing on all the various technologies and systems in place to send emails, the best brands are simply paying attention. For my client with the skincare brand we only added one behavior based flow to her campaign and the numbers went up and even more important the lady seemed to be happy again.

www.pingovo.com
www.saproh.com

AI Agents vs Traditional Software: What Businesses Need to Know in 2026

Saproh — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 11:25:55 +0000

Software is changing rapidly.
For decades, businesses have relied on traditional software to automate processes, manage data, communicate with customers, and improve productivity. But the rise of AI agents is introducing a new way for software to interact with information, users, and business systems.
So, what exactly is the difference between AI agents and traditional software? And more importantly, which approach should businesses consider in 2026?
What Is Traditional Software?
Traditional software generally follows predefined rules and workflows.
A user provides an input → the software processes it according to programmed logic → the software produces an output.
For example, a CRM system can automatically assign a lead to a salesperson based on predefined conditions. An accounting application can calculate invoices according to programmed formulas.
Traditional software is highly effective when processes are predictable and clearly defined.
Key characteristics include:
Rule-based workflows
Predictable outputs
Structured data processing
Fixed business logic
High reliability for repetitive tasks
Limited ability to adapt independently
What Are AI Agents?
AI agents are software systems designed to understand goals, reason through tasks, use tools, access information, and take actions with a certain degree of autonomy.
Instead of simply following one fixed workflow, an AI agent can determine the steps needed to accomplish a goal.
For example, an AI-powered sales agent could:
Receive a new customer inquiry
Understand the customer's requirements
Search relevant product information
Prepare a personalized response
Update the CRM
Schedule a follow-up
Escalate the conversation to a human when necessary
This makes AI agent development particularly interesting for complex and dynamic business processes.

The important point is that AI agents aren't necessarily replacements for traditional software.
In many cases, the best solution is a combination of both.

What Should Businesses Choose?
There is no universal answer.
Choose traditional software when:
Processes are predictable
Accuracy is critical
Rules are clearly defined
Workflows don't change frequently
Consider AI agents when:
Tasks require reasoning
Information is unstructured
Workflows involve multiple systems
Users need natural-language interaction
Processes require contextual decision-making
And in many cases, hybrid software architecture may be the most practical approach.
Final Thoughts
AI agents are changing how businesses think about software.
Traditional applications were primarily designed to execute instructions.
AI agents are increasingly being designed to understand goals, make decisions, and take actions.
The businesses that benefit most won't necessarily be those that adopt the most AI. They'll be the ones that identify the right problems and use the right technology to solve them.
The future of software isn't necessarily AI replacing traditional software. It's intelligent systems working alongside reliable software infrastructure to create smarter, faster, and more scalable businesses.

SEO vs AEO: What Should Businesses Focus on in 2026?

Saproh — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:00:10 +0000

For years, businesses focused on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to rank higher on Google, attract organic traffic, and generate leads. But with AI-powered search and answer engines becoming increasingly popular, businesses now need to think beyond traditional search rankings.

This has introduced a new concept: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

So, what should businesses focus on in 2026 — SEO or AEO?

The short answer is: both.

SEO remains the foundation of online visibility, while AEO helps businesses make their content more suitable for AI-powered search and conversational answers.

In this guide, we will explore the difference between SEO and AEO, why AEO is becoming important, and how businesses can build a strategy that works for both.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

It is the process of optimizing a website and its content to improve its visibility in search engine results.

For example, if someone searches:

"Best digital marketing agency for small businesses"

A business using SEO aims to appear among the top search results.

SEO typically includes:

Keyword research
On-page SEO
Technical SEO
Content optimization
Internal linking
Link building
Website performance
Mobile optimization
Local SEO

The ultimate goal is to attract relevant organic traffic and convert visitors into customers.

What Is AEO?

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization.

Instead of focusing only on ranking webpages, AEO focuses on creating content that directly answers users' questions and can potentially be surfaced by AI-powered answer engines.

For example, instead of searching:

"Digital marketing strategies"

a user might ask:

"What digital marketing strategy should a small business use to get more customers in 2026?"

An AI-powered search platform may provide a direct answer instead of simply displaying a list of websites.

AEO focuses on making your content:

Clear
Accurate
Well-structured
Question-focused
Helpful
Easy to understand
Supported by credible information

SEO vs AEO: What's the Difference?

SEO and AEO have different objectives, but they are closely connected.

SEO	AEO
Focuses on search rankings	Focuses on direct answers
Targets keywords	Targets questions and search intent
Generates website traffic	Builds visibility in answer experiences
Optimizes webpages	Optimizes information and answers
Focuses heavily on SERPs	Focuses on AI and conversational search
Uses traditional SEO techniques	Builds on SEO with answer-focused content

However, AEO should not be considered a complete replacement for SEO.

A strong AEO strategy still depends on having high-quality, discoverable, and well-structured content.

Why Is AEO Becoming Important in 2026?

The way people search for information is evolving.

Users are increasingly comfortable asking conversational questions instead of typing short keywords.

For example:

Traditional search:

"Best CRM software"

Conversational search:

"Which CRM software is best for a small business with a limited budget?"

The second query contains more context and intent.

AI-powered search experiences are designed to understand this context and provide more direct responses.

This means businesses need to create content that answers the actual questions their customers are asking.

Is SEO Still Important in 2026?

Yes.

Despite the growth of AI-powered search, SEO remains extremely important.

A technically strong website, useful content, clear website structure, internal linking, relevant keywords, and strong authority are still valuable components of digital visibility.

In fact, businesses should think of SEO as the foundation and AEO as an additional layer.

Without a strong website and useful content, businesses may struggle to establish visibility across both traditional and AI-powered search experiences.

How SEO and AEO Work Together

The smartest strategy is not:

SEO vs AEO

It is:

SEO + AEO

For example, imagine a digital marketing agency creates a blog called:

"How to Generate Leads Through Instagram Marketing."

For SEO, the agency can optimize the article around relevant keywords.

For AEO, the article can include direct answers to questions such as:

How does Instagram generate leads?
How much does Instagram marketing cost?
What type of content generates leads?
How can small businesses use Instagram?
Are Instagram Ads effective for lead generation?

This creates content that is useful for both traditional search users and conversational search users.

7 AEO Strategies Businesses Should Use in 2026

1. Answer Questions Directly

Don't make users search through several paragraphs to find an answer.

Start important sections with a clear response.

For example:

Question: What is AEO?

Answer: AEO is the process of optimizing content so that it clearly answers user questions and is easier for answer engines to understand and potentially surface.

This structure improves readability and makes your content more useful.

2. Create FAQ Sections

FAQs are an excellent way to address specific customer questions.

You can create FAQs around:

Products
Services
Pricing
Features
Problems
Comparisons
Industry questions

For example, a digital marketing agency could answer:

How long does SEO take to generate results?

Is SEO better than paid advertising?

How much does social media marketing cost?

These questions can also become opportunities for long-tail SEO keywords.

3. Use Conversational Keywords

Traditional keyword research is still important, but businesses should also identify conversational queries.

Instead of targeting only:

"Meta Ads"

create content around:

"How can small businesses use Meta Ads to generate leads?"

This allows your content to target more specific search intent.

4. Structure Content Properly

Use a clear hierarchy:

H1 → H2 → H3

Break long sections into smaller sections.

Use:

Bullet points
Tables
Short paragraphs
Lists
FAQs
Step-by-step explanations

Well-structured content is easier for humans to read and easier for search systems to interpret.

5. Demonstrate Expertise

Businesses should avoid publishing generic content simply to target keywords.

Instead, include:

Original insights
Real examples
Case studies
Expert opinions
Industry experience
Data and research
Practical recommendations

The goal should be to create content that genuinely helps the reader.

6. Keep Information Updated

Digital marketing changes quickly.

An article written several years ago may contain outdated strategies or statistics.

Businesses should regularly review important content and update:

Statistics
Examples
Tools
Strategies
Screenshots
Industry information

This helps keep content relevant.

7. Build Topical Authority

Instead of publishing random blogs, create content clusters.

For example, a digital marketing website could have:

Pillar Topic:
Digital Marketing

Supporting Topics:

SEO
AEO
Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Google Ads
Meta Ads
Email Marketing
Local SEO

Then connect related articles through internal links.

This creates a stronger and more organized content ecosystem.

SEO vs AEO: Which One Should Businesses Focus On?

Businesses should not completely abandon SEO in favor of AEO.

Instead, prioritize them in this order:

Step 1: Build a Strong SEO Foundation

Start with:

Technical SEO
Keyword research
Website optimization
High-quality content
Internal linking
Mobile optimization

Step 2: Add AEO Principles

Then make your content more answer-focused.

Include:

FAQs
Direct answers
Conversational queries
Comparison content
How-to guides
Question-based headings

Step 3: Build Authority

Finally, focus on becoming a trusted source within your industry.

Publish original and genuinely useful content consistently.

SEO vs AEO for Different Types of Businesses

E-commerce Businesses

E-commerce companies should focus on product descriptions, comparison content, buying guides, FAQs, reviews, and category-page SEO.

Local Businesses

Local businesses should prioritize local SEO while also answering common customer questions.

For example:

"What is the best digital marketing agency near me?"

A business with accurate local information and useful content has more opportunities to be discovered.

Coaching Institutes

Coaching businesses can create question-focused content such as:

How to prepare for NEET?
How to prepare for CUET?
What should students study before an exam?
Which books are best for NEET preparation?

This content can support both SEO and AEO.

Healthcare Businesses

Healthcare organizations can create educational content that answers common patient questions while maintaining accuracy, credibility, and appropriate medical review processes.

Common SEO and AEO Mistakes

Mistake 1: Keyword Stuffing

Using the same keyword repeatedly does not automatically improve rankings.

Write naturally and prioritize usefulness.

Mistake 2: Creating Generic AI Content

Simply generating hundreds of AI-written articles without adding expertise or originality can result in repetitive and low-value content.

AI can assist with content creation, but businesses should add human expertise and original insights.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Search Intent

A user searching for:

"SEO pricing"

has a different intent from someone searching:

"What is SEO?"

Your content should match the reason behind the search.

Mistake 4: Ignoring Traditional SEO

Businesses should not focus so heavily on AEO that they forget technical SEO, website performance, indexing, internal linking, and other fundamentals.

Mistake 5: Not Updating Content

Outdated information can reduce the usefulness of an otherwise strong article.

Review important pages regularly.

How to Measure SEO and AEO Performance

Businesses should track different types of visibility.

For SEO, monitor:

Organic traffic
Keyword rankings
Click-through rate
Impressions
Conversions
Indexed pages

For AI and answer-engine visibility, businesses can also monitor:

Brand mentions
AI citations where measurable
Referral traffic from AI platforms
Questions your content answers
Branded search growth

Measurement capabilities vary across AI platforms, so businesses should avoid relying on a single metric.

The Future of SEO and AEO

Search will continue becoming more conversational and personalized.

However, the fundamentals of successful digital marketing are unlikely to disappear.

Businesses will still need:

Helpful information
Strong websites
Credible brands
Technical accessibility
Great user experiences
Original content
Clear answers

The biggest change is how users discover that information.

Instead of simply competing for a position on a search results page, businesses increasingly need to become a trusted source that search engines and AI-powered systems can understand.

Final Verdict: SEO or AEO?

The answer is SEO + AEO.

SEO should remain the foundation of your digital marketing strategy in 2026.

AEO should be added to that foundation to prepare your business for conversational and AI-powered search.

Think about it this way:

SEO helps people find your website.

AEO helps your information become useful in answer-driven search experiences.

Businesses that combine both approaches can build stronger digital visibility, improve their content strategy, and stay prepared as search continues to evolve.

The future of search isn't simply about ranking for keywords.

It's about being the best answer to the questions your customers are asking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between SEO and AEO?

SEO focuses on improving website visibility in search engine results, while AEO focuses on creating clear, useful answers that can potentially be surfaced by AI-powered answer engines.

Is AEO replacing SEO?

No. AEO should complement SEO rather than replace it. Traditional SEO provides many of the technical and content foundations required for modern search visibility.

What is the best SEO strategy for 2026?

Focus on helpful content, search intent, technical SEO, topical authority, internal linking, mobile usability, and creating content that genuinely solves customer problems.

How can businesses optimize for AI search?

Businesses can create clear, authoritative, well-structured content, answer specific questions, use conversational language, build topical authority, and maintain strong technical SEO.

Should small businesses use AEO?

Yes. Small businesses can use AEO principles by creating FAQs, answering customer questions, publishing useful guides, and developing content around specific conversational searches.

Conclusion

SEO vs AEO is not a competition.

In 2026, businesses should use both.

SEO provides the foundation for online visibility, while AEO helps businesses adapt to the growing importance of conversational and AI-powered search.

The businesses that succeed will not simply create content for algorithms.

They will create content that answers real questions, demonstrates expertise, solves problems, and provides genuine value.

That is the strategy businesses should focus on in 2026.

Saproh’s Approach to Building Technology Solutions That Drive Business Growth

Saproh — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:58:07 +0000

In today’s competitive business environment, technology is no longer just a support function—it is a business growth enabler. Companies need technology solutions that improve efficiency, strengthen customer experiences, reduce operational challenges, and create opportunities for sustainable growth.
At Saproh, the approach to technology goes beyond simply building software. The focus is on understanding business challenges and developing custom technology solutions that deliver measurable business value.
Understanding the Business Before Building the Technology
Every business has different goals, processes, customers, and challenges. That is why a one-size-fits-all technology solution may not always deliver the desired results.
Saproh begins by understanding the client's business requirements, current processes, pain points, and long-term objectives. This business-first approach helps create a technology strategy that supports specific organizational goals.
Whether the requirement is custom software development, web development, mobile app development, cloud solutions, or digital transformation, the objective remains the same: build technology that solves real business problems.
Building Custom Technology Solutions
Businesses often need more flexibility than off-the-shelf software can provide. Custom technology solutions allow organizations to create systems around their unique workflows and requirements.
Saproh focuses on developing solutions that are:
Scalable and adaptable
User-friendly
Secure and reliable
Aligned with business objectives
Designed for long-term growth
By combining business understanding with technical expertise, technology becomes a strategic asset rather than just another operational expense.
Using Technology to Improve Business Efficiency
One of the biggest benefits of technology is its ability to streamline repetitive and time-consuming processes.
Through business process automation, organizations can reduce manual work, minimize errors, and allow employees to focus on higher-value activities.
From automated workflows to integrated business applications, Saproh’s technology approach focuses on improving operational efficiency while creating a smoother experience for both employees and customers.
Scalable Solutions for Growing Businesses
Growth brings new challenges. A technology system that works for a small organization may not be sufficient when the business expands.
That is why scalability is an important part of Saproh’s technology development approach.
Solutions are designed with future growth in mind, allowing businesses to add users, features, integrations, and capabilities as their requirements evolve.
This helps companies avoid frequent technology replacements and build a stronger foundation for long-term growth.
Leveraging Modern Technologies
Modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, data analytics, APIs, and automation are transforming how businesses operate.
Saproh explores relevant technologies based on the specific needs of each business rather than adopting technology simply because it is trending.
The right technology can help organizations:
Make faster, data-driven decisions
Automate repetitive processes
Improve customer engagement
Optimize operational costs
Develop new digital products and services
Create competitive advantages
Security and Reliability at the Core
As businesses become increasingly dependent on digital systems, technology security and reliability become critical.
A strong technology solution should not only perform well but also protect business data and provide a dependable user experience.
Saproh considers security, performance, reliability, and maintainability throughout the technology development process, helping businesses build solutions they can depend on as they grow.
Technology Designed Around Customer Experience
Business growth is closely connected to customer satisfaction.
From websites and mobile applications to digital platforms and enterprise software, every interaction influences how customers perceive a brand.
Saproh focuses on creating user-centric technology solutions that make digital experiences simple, accessible, and engaging.
A better customer experience can lead to stronger engagement, improved retention, and greater business opportunities.
From Technology Development to Business Growth
The ultimate goal of technology should not simply be to launch a product or application. It should create measurable business impact.
Saproh’s approach connects technology development with business growth, helping organizations use digital solutions to improve productivity, enhance customer experiences, optimize operations, and create scalable growth opportunities.
Conclusion
Technology can be one of the strongest competitive advantages for modern businesses—but only when it is connected to the right business strategy.
Saproh’s approach focuses on combining business understanding, custom technology solutions, digital transformation, automation, scalability, and modern technology to help organizations move forward.
Because successful technology isn't just about building something that works.
It's about building something that helps the business grow.