Do You Practice Good "List Hygiene"?
Have you ever heard the term "list hygiene"? Every time I use this term in a presentation, it gets a lot of laughs, but seriously, it's an important part of your e-mail marketing program.
List hygiene refers to the process of cleaning up your e-mail list. Luckily, our eMS system does much of the dirty work for you by tracking and managing bounces and invalid addresses. Read on to learn more about bounced and invalid e-mails and how eMS handles them.
What is a Bounce?
A bounced e-mail is one that is undeliverable for some reason. Sometimes, the receiving server will send back a message indicating your e-mail has bounced, sometimes not. There are nearly 30 different reasons for e-mail bounces. Perhaps the recipient's mailbox was too full, the mail server was down, the address no longer exists, or the system detected offensive content, for example. Whatever the reason, eMS assists you in managing and tracking bounces for each campaign you send.
To view a list of all of your subscribers' addresses that bounced during a campaign, go to your "Sent Messages Statistics" for that campaign, then view the "Bounced" column in your "E-Mail Details." Click on "View" to bring up a list of all bounced subscribers.
Three Bounces, and You're Out!
When a sent message hits an inbox that is full or unavailable, eMS will attempt to deliver the message repeatedly over the next 48 hours. If it can't be delivered, it will be considered one bounce. If this address bounces three campaigns in a row, the address will be marked invalid, and eMS will no longer send messages to that address.
Likewise, if a message is sent to an address that no longer exists, the receiving server will send a failure message, and the message will be considered a bounce. After five days, eMS will attempt to send the message again. If this attempt fails, it is considered a second bounce. The address will be marked invalid if this occurs one more time.
Please note: AOL addresses only allow one bounce before being marked invalid.
This whole process is called list hygiene, and it's important because ISPs like AOL don't like it if you continue to send to invalid addresses. Keeping your list clean will increase your deliverability and reduce the risk of being labeled as spam.
What Should You Do With Bounced Addresses?
To create a list of all your bounced subscribers, log in to eMS, then go to "List Management." Scroll down to "Search," and then click on "Bounced." Under "Search Options," select "View all results" and click "Continue" to generate your list. Go through your list to check for easy-to-spot spelling errors.
If you catch an error, you can click on the subscriber to view the profile and make your edits. Within the subscriber's profile, you may also view that subscriber's "Bounce Details." Notice how you can view which campaigns your subscriber did not receive:
Another suggestion: If your list of bounced subscribers is long, you might wish to export the list into an Excel spreadsheet. You can print out that list and make follow up calls to subscribers to clarify e-mail addresses. To export your list, simply do your search for bounced subscribers and then, near the bottom of the search results page, select the "Export all results" option and click "Continue."
Reverting Bounced Subscribers
Notice in the "Bounce Details" for the subscriber above, there is a link called "Revert bounced flag." There, you can manually remove the accumulated bounces for that subscriber if necessary. You can do the same with addresses that are flagged invalid.
Was this article helpful to you? Please send your feedback or suggestions to me at goodthinking@kateycharles.com.
