Or, “Is it at least the same as, or better than, what you have already?” Developers used to write software by first spending weeks or months gathering information, then disappearing for months or years to go off and actually write the software. However, people often found that what the developers finally ended up releasing - after having been away for so long - wasn’t what the client wanted, or what the market needed. So their time was completely wasted and the project was a complete failure.
Luckily, things are changing. In the web world, you can now make a new ‘release’ of your software with just the push of a button, which has shifted modern software development to focus on more “Agile” methodologies. “Release often. Fast development without too much formality. Small sets of changes. Small teams.” - This is the Agile mindset; the idea being that you write some code, get it out to your users quickly, get their feedback, make changes, and repeat. “Agile” is still a relatively new concept though – the “Agile Manifesto” was only released in 2001, so sometimes keeping true to the core concepts can be a challenge - especially for technology managers who are old farts like me.
At an old job I had quite a few years ago, I had a boss - the CTO - who was generally a great guy. Good technologist. Solid conception of how all the pieces fit together. But sometimes, I, or one of the other devs, would bring something up to him that “we should do” and we would inevitably run into the following trap -
Me: “Hey Boss, we really ought to do ‘x’ - it would make our lives easier and make us more money and be super awesome etc etc etc.”
Him: “Well, minion - that’s a really good idea. But if we’re going to do ‘x’ we might as well do ‘y’ - it’s the very same code! And if we’re going to do ‘y’ we really have no choice but to do ‘z’ - people have been asking for that forever now! And to do all of x, y, and z will take us a jillion billion frillion months. So let’s not do that now.
These are only a few of many benefits of a clean email list. So before you send that next campaign, gut check the quality of your list first. This will help you gauge your campaign’s true performance, protect your sender reputation and impress your boss.
