Best Practices In Strategic Email Marketing April 2005

Technique
How To Control Hard Bounces
By Randall Litchfield

Ever wonder why invalid email addresses keep bouncing back no matter how diligently you manage your list? One reason is that, on average, 20% of us change our email addresses every year, either lured by a new job or a better email service or simply abandoning an account due to spam.

The prospect of losing a fifth of your list every year makes hard bounce administration very important. Now, new ISP blocking practices can make it a matter of campaign life or death. In the case of a growing list of ISPs, if you send to the same invalid email address a second time they automatically block all further messages from your email server. Another ISP practice growing in popularity is measuring the rate at which you send to invalid email addresses. If they record more than a certain number of hard bounces in a three minute period they automatically block further transmission.

ISP server logic goes something like this: emailing twice to the same hardbounce means poor list management. People who typically practice poor list management are spammers. Therefore you are a spammer - no more access for you.

At this point you count on the impeccable ISP relations you or your email service maintain to get yourself unblocked. The easier way, of course, is preventive maintenance. Here are the 5 most important ways to reduce the number of hardbounces:

  1. Include a Personal Preferences link in all your emails. The recipient should be able to click on this link and update any information you have regarding their subscription - including a new email address.

  2. When an address does bounce, immediately contact them through other means. Post cards and phone calls work very well. When Inbox performs this service for clients, we find that a majority of recipients are ready and willing to provide their new address.

  3. Maintain clean lists: Check for incorrectly formatted addresses, invalid domains and typos (i.e., hotmai.com).

  4. Confirm email addresses: Send an auto-reply when a user subscribes (a thank you along with the most recent addition of a newsletter often works best). If that message bounces, you can attempt to correct it right from the start.

  5. Make sure your email system automatically suppresses addresses that previously bounced. The one sure way to stay out of trouble! If your email service doesn't do this automatically, find one that does.