A common worry from our customers is that emails from old publications are not valid anymore. After all, researchers may find a new job and leave their original institutes. We certainly don’t want our bounce rate to be high, but we also don’t want to miss opportunities from researchers who don’t publish recently.
But exactly how many emails become invalid? To this end, we analyzed an email campaign sent to researchers who published in the past 6 years. While the percentage of valid emails decreases for older emails, it is still as high as 95% as long as the emails are within 3 years.
In terms of engagement, we find the year does not change the open rate significantly. That means an old email is as active as a new one.
With the number above, we conclude that –
- Without an email cleaning tool, it is fairly safe to send to researchers who published in the past 3 years. The bounce rate will be less than 5%.
- If we use an email cleaning tool before sending, then old emails are as engaged as the new ones.
Do you need help in finding leads from publications using your own keywords? Just let us know.