Email Hygiene & Email Archiving: Their Differences and How They Impact Each Other
Email Archiving and Email Hygiene are essentially two strategies of accomplishing efficient communications, and as such, are often coupled together and sold as part of the same product.
How is Email Hygiene Different from Email Archiving?
These email service combo platters are marketed as being more efficient than others, and on the surface, they might seem that way. But here’s why they aren’t:
Email Archiving
Email archiving is the practice of retaining and maintaining the communications to and from your organization for purposes of remaining compliant with regulatory standards. These solution capture a copy of all internal and external emails directly from the mail server. Each email is securely save, indexed for fast retrieval.
There are number of type of email archiving solutions in the market. But, they fall in two basic categories: in-house or cloud. You can learn more about these solution in our blog Email Archiving Solutions Comparison: How to Find the Right Solution?
Email Hygiene
Email Hygiene is a process designed to help companies with list validation, or the process of maintaining up-to-date email-address lists by eliminating invalid or inactive accounts. The primary objective of email hygiene is to assist organizations in increasing the deliverability of their communications to outside sources by deleting disengaged subscribers, thereby allowing for purposeful interactions related to pertinent business.
These products are designed to increase the ease-of-use with managed hosted solutions and increase the security of the data contained in those communications. They do this by combing through the list of addresses which your organization is using to locate addresses that have become inactive or unresponsive.
Often, accounts which appear disengaged from communication have defaulted to automatically sending your emails into a spam or non-existent folder, which over time will ruin the IP reputation of your company or agency. Email addresses are not static, and they will “atrophy” over time, leading to emails bouncing back, either because the account has been deleted or the mailbox is full. Hygiene products scan your list to eliminate those accounts.
This incorporates what is known as deliverability, which describes the success at with which an email marketer gets their content into subscriber’s mailboxes. It involves a complex formula determined by several different factors, namely engagement rates and email activity metrics, which subsequently signal to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that the communication belongs in the inbox you are trying to reach.
Why You Should Separate Email Hygiene & Email Archiving
It has been proven that enterprise email combo products may not implement top-of-the-line solutions across the board, leaving your company vulnerable to the litany of problems that could result from a lack of full coverage or use of inadequate services.
Simply put, using an all-encompassing email product which offers across-the-board solutions:
- Does not give most efficient tools to achieve compliance
- Does not give business productivity tools
- Does not give access to the most securty tools
- Does not give email communications tools
There are certain benefits to a one-and-done product, convenience being the most commonly referenced. However, the increased ease does not outweigh the negative effects of not using the best individual tools.
An inability to fully cover your organization in the event of litigation or open records requests may result from using these blanket types of solutions, and they do not provide you with the most efficient method for increasing the impact your communications have on the growth and success in your business ventures.
Getting that level of production from your email solutions can only be achieved by implementing separate, top-of-the-line products, which are each individually designed to best suit the needs of your organization. In doing so, you can ensure that the solutions you choose guarantee your ability to operate at the highest functioning level of efficiency and compliance.
Best Practices for Selecting Email Solutions
Finding the solution that fits your organization best can be the biggest factor in providing efficient and easy-to-maintain compliance within your industry standards. To choose the optimal solutions for both Email Archiving and Email Hygiene, there are many considerations to weigh — a process which can’t be taken lightly.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when sorting through the options:
- Don’t use hybrid messaging solutions.
- As pointed out, these prevent you from having the best tools at your disposal in favor of having a do-it-all solution, which truly does about half of what is needed.
- Find the best-of-breed solution for each of your needs.
- In order to operate at your fullest capability, you should scope out the best option for each individual need you have. While this involves more work on the front end, it will save you more time in the long run, providing you with iron-clad guarantees that each facet of your business operation is working to its best ability.
- Purpose-built solution vs. An Inferior All-in-One Solution.
- This refers to what type of solution you are using, and for what purpose. A purpose-built solution will guarantee that the problem is being addressed to its fullest needs, whereas an inferior version of a similar solution will not provide the same level of functionality.
How to Select an Archiving Solution
Finding a solution that stores your email and social media communications and the data contained within is not hard. However, to locate the best available, look no further than Intradyn.
At Intradyn, we are confident that we present the most comprehensive solutions, in large part because we were the original and first of our kind, and have been setting the tone since our inception in 2002.
Our state-of-the-art email archiving solution can reduce the storage costs and stress on your servers and the associated expense for email back-ups. It will allow you to instantly access enormous volumes of emails and electronic documents for eDiscovery regulations, providing you with quick recovery, high performance and trouble-free searches. The installation process will take only minutes, but is guaranteed to keep your organization in compliance with applicable regulations for years to come. Contact us today to learn more.
