Ten Quick Tips on How To Reduce Email Bounces
Defining Soft and Hard Bounces
A soft bounce is an email message that gets as far as the recipient's mail server (it recognizes the address) but is bounced back undelivered before it gets to the intended recipient. A soft bounce might occur because the recipient's mailbox is full, the server is down or swamped with messages, the message is too large or the user has abandoned the mailbox. We will attempt to deliver the email regularly for a few days. If it is still undelivered, it becomes a hard bounce.
A hard bounce is an email message that has been returned to the sender and is permanently undeliverable. Causes include invalid addresses (domain name doesn't exist, typos, changed address, etc.) or the email recipient's mail server has blocked your server. Servers will also interpret bounces differently, meaning a soft bounce on one server may be classified as a hard bounce on another.
Here are 10 quick tips to help you manage and reduce bounces:
1. Clean Lists: Check for incorrectly formatted addresses, invalid domains and typos (i.e., alo.com).
2. Consider Using An Email Change of Address (ECOA) Service: With many companies experiencing email address churn of 2.5% a month, an ECOA service could pay huge dividends.
3. Confirm Email Addresses: Send an auto-reply confirmation when a user subscribes, registers or makes a purchase. If that message bounces, you can attempt to correct it right from the start. Additionally, you may want to consider requiring a second email address line (in your online forms) that confirms the correct address was entered.
4. Include Subscription/Account Management Links in Your Emails: Make it easy for your customers and subscribers to update their email addresses by including a link in your emails to your Website account/subscription management page.
5. Prompt Customers To Update Information: When a customer is completing a transaction in the shopping cart, for example, prompt them to verify and update information - particularly their email address. If you have postal addresses or phone numbers for customers/subscribers with bad email addresses, consider contacting them via mail (such as a postcard) or telephone.
6. Understand and Monitor Spam Filters: Get to know the more common things that most spam filters. For more information on Informz's Spam Filter Testing, give us a call.
7. Remove "Spam Flag" Addresses: These are often added maliciously. Examples include: abuse@somedomain.com. postmaster@somedomain.comand nospam@antispam.net.
8. Pretest Your Emails: Prior to distributing your email to your entire list, send a test to yourself and others (make sure you include all the major email services used by members of your list).
9. Understand How Informz Processes Bounces: Gain a thorough understanding of how we classify and handle soft and hard bounces - and manage accordingly.
10. Monitor Changes Among ISPs: After mergers, financial troubles and other announcements, many users of a particular ISP may decide to switch to a different account or ISP for their email. Consider sending an email to members of your list with the domain name in question, asking them if they would like to update their email address and other information.
|
