Email marketing is one of the most effective promotional strategies and email bounce presents a big hurdle. Email marketing strategies used to be quite simple in the past, demanding a fraction of the team’s time. Today, they require a complex approach with numerous nuances and Email Bounces is one of the most significant ones.
Staying ahead of the competition using email marketing is possible but you need to be careful of email bounce. In fact, you are unlikely to succeed if you don’t. However, without in-depth analysis and highly innovative strategies, you can’t show your individuality and supremacy.
No matter how amazingly strong your email marketing strategy is, it’s only as good as the number of potential clients it reaches.
You can spend weeks developing high-quality content, sweating over amazing subject lines and running after mind-boggling images. It will all be useless if the email doesn’t reach the recipient i.e an email bounce occurs.
So when you think about email marketing, you should start with deliverability.
Bounce Rates And Everything That Comes With Them
An email bounce one of the most annoying things email marketers encounter when executing their campaigns. When an email bounces, it doesn’t reach the recipient and comes back to the sender with one of such frustrating messages as “message not delivered” or “your message has been blocked”.
The higher the bounce rate for your email address becomes, the worse your reputation is. As a result, the number of delivered emails falls rapidly. So the lower your bounce rate is, the better.
Don’t confuse the email bounce rate with website bounce rate. The website bounce rate indicates users that visit the website but leave it immediately without any interaction.
Two key types of email bounces exist:
1. Hard Bounces
Hard bounces occur when you send an email to an invalid or incorrect address or an outdated domain or address. When your email bounce is classified as a hard bounce, you should consider the address invalid and never use it again.
However, not all providers and marketers “learn the lesson”. They leave such addresses on the list and continue sending emails there, risking their sender’s reputation.
2. Soft Bounces
Soft bounces occur for numerous temporary reasons, such as a server breakdown, a full mailbox, overly large message, etc. You could try sending emails to these addresses again after some time to see if the problem has been resolved.
However, continuing to send emails and getting soft bounces could still affect your sender’s reputation. So an email marketer must monitor soft bounces carefully and remove the addresses in order to avoid a high bounce rate.
A good email bounce rate is less than 2%. Anything above could hinder your campaign. So if the bounce rate approaches 5% or 10%, it should raise a red flag.
Decreasing Your Email Bounce Rate: The Most Efficient Approaches
If your email bounce rate is higher than 2%, you need to start fixing the problem immediately. Otherwise, your marketing campaign analysis could be uninformative.
A huge part of email marketing is high bounce rate prevention. These tips can help you ensure excellent deliverability.
1. Work on Your Contact Form
Where do you get erroneous addresses? The majority comes from your contact forms. One of the simplest ways to eliminate bad addresses is not to get them in the first place. By adding real-time email address validation programs to your contact forms, you can avoid putting wrong addresses on your list.
Meanwhile, by using CAPCHAs, you can avoid spammy addresses on your list that could come with spam traps.
2. Don’t Buy Email Lists
Buying ready-to-use email lists may be tempting. However, they are likely to be filled with invalid addresses, spam traps, and typos.
If you decide to make such a purchase, be ready for a high bounce rate and a low email marketing ROI.
3. Keep Your Email List Clean
Email list validation should become an integral part of your email marketing campaign. Old and erroneous addresses can ruin your sender’s reputation, increase your bounce rate, and hinder your marketing campaign results.
You can choose any of the readily available validation software to make sure your email list is clean so all of your emails reach their destination.
4. Update Your Information
One of the simplest ways to keep your email list clean and make sure your recipients still value your attention is to ask for updates. Send update requests to your clients to ensure their addresses are still valid.
They may share new addresses or let you know that they aren’t interested in your information anymore. Either way, you’ll decrease your bounce rate.
5. Make Sure Your Email Doesn’t Look Like Spam
Spam emails have their special hallmarks, which force the email provider or the recipient to send them directly to the spam folder. Does your email look like spam? Will the filter identify it as potentially dangerous? You can use a service to figure out if the majority of the filters would send your email to the spam folder.
- Is Not Spam
- Mail Tester
You should also make sure your email is authenticated. Use the following methods to do it:
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework) – compares the sender’s IP with a list of authorized IPs sent from the domain.
- DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) – shows that email hasn’t been tampered with while it was being sent.
- DMARC (Domain-Based Message Authentication Reporting And Conformance) – requires the email to pass SPF and DKIM before sending.
Using these methods is the sender’s responsibility.
Sender’s Reputation And What Comes With It
Another factor, which can affect your email deliverability, is your sender’s reputation. Your email sender’s reputation is the score that the internet service provider gives the company that sends emails. The higher your sender’s reputation is, the more likely your email is to end up in the recipient’s mailbox.
When the sender’s reputation score falls below a certain point, your email may go to the spam folder or be rejected entirely. The sender’s score depends on several factors:
- Number of emails sent by the company
- The number of recipients that mark emails sent by the company as spam
- The number of recipients that complain to the provider about emails sent by the company
- The frequency with which the company hits spam traps
- The number of blacklists the company is on
- The number of recipients that actually open, reply to, forward, and delete emails sent by the company as well as click links inside messages.
- The number of recipients that unsubscribes from the company’s email list.
Each internet service provider decides which of the above points to include when evaluating the company’s sender’s reputation. Meaning, you can have different sender’s scores with different providers.
Maintaining a top-notch sender’s reputation is crucial to your email deliverability. By failing to keep it pristine, improper marketing campaign analysis may not be the worst thing you could face. You risk encountering email blacklisting, domain blocks, and other unpleasant consequences.
How do you keep your sender’s reputation in its top shape?
1. Work With Your Target Audience
Here is where your marketing efforts are especially important. If you find the right addresses to put on your email list, you can be sure your emails are read, replied to and not sent to spam.
According to experts at Miromind, the power of high-quality content in emails can’t be underestimated for the entire B2B marketing campaign.
Make sure your email is directed at the target audience and has the information it’s likely to read.
2. Maintain Your Email List
Same as with the high bounce rate prevention, a clean email list is a key to the good sender’s reputation.
3. Send Confirmation Emails
When someone subscribes to your list, always send confirmation emails. This way, you can make sure the email address is valid, and the recipient actually wants to read your messages. This decreases the chances of your emails ending up in spam folders.
4. Track Email Delivery Rates
Make sure your email delivery rates are high while the bounce rates are low. If you monitor these factors on a regular basis, you can catch the problem before it affects your sender’s reputation.
5. Manage Your Email Volume
Bombarding recipients with emails doesn’t just annoy them tremendously, it makes the internet service provider suspicious.
Implement an email sending plan which considers the needs and wishes of your clients. They aren’t likely to wish for numerous email a day. More often than not, one email per week is sufficient.
Sending too many emails a day can lower your sender’s score regardless of the bounce rates, open rates, and click-through rates.
Final Thoughts
One of the most important parts of your email marketing campaign doesn’t have anything to do with the contents of your emails, your ability to identify the target audience, and your expertise in promotional tricks. If your email doesn’t reach the sender, all your efforts disappear in vain.
That’s why it’s important to monitor such things as a bounce rate and a sender’s score. By keeping them in good shape, you can ensure high email deliverability and a proper analysis of your marketing campaign.
