Archive

Posts Tagged ‘bounces’

Hard Bounces, Soft Bounces and reducing bounces in Email Marketing

June 28th, 2011 No comments

What is a Bounce in Email Marketing

Bounce means that your email has returned (bounced back), the server where it was sent rejected it for a reason and sent it back to you. A bounce means that your email was not delivered. There are two kinds of Bounces

A Hard Bounce (can’t deliver email at all)

This is your more logical reason for a bounce, that the email address is invalid or doesn’t exist. Reason for a hard bounce can be

  • The subscriber has left the company (and their email has been removed from the server – not redirected but removed)
  • The domain has changed or removed (the company has changed their domain or stopped using their domain)
  • The email address is spelt incorrectly

A Soft Bounce (can’t deliver email at that time)

Soft Bounces happen when there the email could not be delivered at that time. The email address is still valid but couldn’t get the email at that time. This could be because

  • The email is too large than the servers size limit
  • The subscriber’s mailbox is full and cannot accept any more emails at that time.
  • The recipient mail server is temporarily down
  •  

    How does DzineMail DIY Email Marketing platform handle Bounces

    Dzinemail handles the two bounces separately

  • Hard Bounces are automatically put into bounce list and not sent any more emails
  • Soft Bounces are not sent any more emails if they have bounced 3 times in a row. Dzinemail does this since this is very unlikely for normal email addresses and there is no point in sending out emails to someone who cannot receive emails.

How can you Reduce Bounces?

Obviously, there is no point in sending emails to subscribers who have moved on or can’t receive your emails. Depending on your list, you can expect for it to reduce by 10-30% over a year by purely bounces. It is very important to make sure that you are cleaning your data as well as bringing new subscribers to your list to make up for the cut.

Make sure all of your data is opt-in

Obvious but we have to say it. Make sure your data is all opt-in. So many times we see clients trying to send their email to the whole world and that just means you are paying more. Only communicate with users who want to hear from you.

Want to make it even more focused? make it a double-optin list

Clean up the email address mistakes

Hotmail.com.au, yahooo.com, gmail.com.au etc  Is there a ! in place of a @. Make sure you go through your list quickly before and after the email to make sure that there are not email address mistakes. Don’t rely on your subscribers to give you the right information.

Follow up with a phone call

Depending on how big your list is, or how big your average order value is, this might be a good strategy. If you see an email address as bounced, get someone to give them a call and get their right email address. It will build up the relationship.

Domain Delivery Reports

Sometimes some servers block your emails. Happens to everyone 🙂

We once managed email for a huge company, who had paid subscribers but one of the ISPs blocked the emails. This meant that the paid subscribers couldn’t get their emails. This popped up in one of the domain reports that there were about 25 users on that domain but no opens and clicks on the domain. We had a quick chat with the ISP, threatened them that we’ll ask our members to change ISPs and they enabled the emails.

Always keep an eye out for the domains and if you see any irregularity in domains. If you see a lot of bounces under the same domain, there might be something wrong.

Check your email for spam

Make sure you check your email for spam before you send it out. Every time you send out an email you should at least get a spam report on it. Sometimes things combine to push you just over the line. Over time, if you have spammy emails, your emails will start bouncing.

 

Need an email marketing platform with capability and a team with the smarts?

Contact us for a pricing. We work with clients all over the world in email marketing.

Kyplex Cloud Security Seal - Click for Verification
Ping your blog