Tips to actively manage your bounces so you can Spring back from the Big Bounce.
1) Use sanity checks, take a moment to confirm submitted email addresses, are in fact, correct. Verify they are technically right and are valid email addresses. Do not assume that people will enter their correct address every time on a website subscription form. i.e. alice@enter.aol
2) Maintain a good engagement record by identifying inactive addresses and remove them from your active mailing lists. Inactive subscribers cannot engage your email message: if you have a habit of keeping and mailing to inactive subscriber addresses – your engagement score will be low, and consequentially a lower sender reputation will follow.
3) Make it simple for your customers to update their information (i.e. replace an email address) by including a link in your mailings to their customer profile record.
4) Confirm your list members, stay away from rented or purchased lists to avoid SPAM Traps.
5) Identify potential issues by reviewing the sender reports. By using Lyris ListManager™ customers with Dundee Internet email list services, receive extensive reports on their mailings and memberships. Customers can create custom reports or view the eight built in reports categories, Mailings, Members, Server Performance, Web site, Purchases, Interest and Surveys to analyze their campaigns.
6) Are you on a blacklist? Regularly check your reputation status and the status of your ESP with the major SPAM databases by reviewing the websites of the reporting agencies such as DNSBL.com, spamhaus.org and SpamCop. Consider using a tool such as the Email Advisor™, compatible with most list hosting services, which includes a BlackList Monitor that analyzes all of the domains and IP addresses in the entire email message you are planning to send, including those URLs included in the content of the message. The Email Advisor™ checks more than 300 Internet blacklists so you don’t have to.
7) Check your content for Spammy phrases and use subject lines that relate to your mailings.
8) Always test your messages. Your newsletters represent you, and with opt-in newsletters, the impression you make is delivered to hundreds or hundreds of thousands with a click of a mouse. Make sure the newsletter they see is the one you intended for them to read. Send your completed message to yourself and your staff BEFORE sending it out to your entire subscriber base.
9) AND finally, recognize how your ESP handles bounce messages. For example, Dundee Internet’s hosted list services using Lyris ListManager™ parses the textual message (SMTP response text) returned from mail servers. Response messages are broken down into a number of categories, with each requiring different behavior. Here are some of the basic categories:
- Invalid user: When ListManager™ sees a response code that corresponds to this category, the email address is put on hold server-wide immediately.
- Filtered Content: Content that trips a spam filter or has other characters that cause it to be rejected (e.g., the message size is too large).
- Technical Issues: The destination server is consistently busy or otherwise unavailable.
- Banned IP: The IP address sending the email has been banned, typically for excessive complaints or for attempting to email too many invalid users at that domain
- Transient Failures: The destination mailbox is temporarily unavailable (usually because it is full)
Thank you for reading, more blogs to follow.
