The best Ultimate Guide to Bounce Email Management is a critical indicator to monitor following the delivery of a marketing email campaign.
The bounce rate is inversely proportional to the quality of your mailing list. A low bounce rate indicates that your list is clean, confirmed, and active, as well as engaged.
A healthy opt-in list should have bounce rates of between 2-3%. If your list consistently generates higher bounce rates, it’s critical to determine why and take efforts to reduce bounces.
We’ve included the facts that every marketer should know about bounce emails here, including why emails bounce, why it’s critical to clean the list of bounced emails, how to handle bounced emails, and how to maintain your bounce rate as low as possible.
Hence, continue reading…
1. Why Do Emails Bounce?
The Ultimate Guide to Bounce Email Whether using a third-party email provider or your own SMTP server, the recipient’s mail server’s SMTP instructions affect email delivery.
Each email must successfully navigate through a number of stages before reaching its intended destination.
The SMTP server queues the email messages. Then it makes a connection to the recipient’s SMTP server through port 25.
The recipient’s mail server notifies the sender’s mail server of its readiness to accept mail.
So, a bounce occurs when the recipient’s mail server returns an email without accepting it.
There are numerous reasons why emails bounce, and when this occurs, the recipient’s mail server sends a “return to sender” message explaining the cause for the bounce.
The email marketing business classifies bounce emails into the following categories:
1-Abrasive bounce. It is a persistent delivery failure caused by an invalid or no longer valid email address for the recipient. Typically, the domain name no longer exists or the mail servers are no longer registered. A typographical mistake, such as Hotmail instead of Hotmail, might render the address inoperable.
2-A gentle bounce. It is a temporary delivery failure that can occur for a variety of causes, including the mailbox being full, the recipient email server being down or unavailable, the email being too large, or the email being deferred.
3-All-around bounce. It implies that the mail server was unable to deliver the email message for an unknown cause.
4-Restricted. Since it originated from a known spammer’s IP address or domain, had an obviously malicious attachment, seemed to contain spam or improper links, or met any other criteria set by the recipient’s mail server, the message was automatically deleted.
5-Report abuse/fraud. This is an email message delivered to the sender by ISP feedback loops in the event that a receiver clicks on the message’s “This is spam/Report spam” link.
6-Temporary bounce. The mail server is trying to send the message. Transient bounce emails do not need the user to take any action. However, if the failure continues, the transient bounce may be classified as a hard bounce.
7-Message of Challenge-Response. This is an automated reply from the receiver verifying that they have received contact from a human.
8-Email with an auto-reply/out-of-office message. It is a reflexive response on the recipient’s part.
Different sorts of bounce emails have varying effects on email deliverability. There are “harmless” bounce messages, such as those sent in response to a challenge or an auto-reply.
“Blocked” bounce emails and feedback reports provide insight into how recipients respond to your mailings. A high volume of “banned” emails indicates that you should review your email program’s settings and pay close attention to the message’s content and sending IP/domain.
Soft and transient bounce are acceptable until they become hard bounce.
The most critical forms of bounce emails to address are hard bounces and reports of abuse/fraud.
They imply that the sender is utilizing poor list acquisition and/or management procedures and is sending undesired or irrelevant messages. This has a direct effect on the deliverability of subsequent email messages sent by the marketer.
2. How does Bounce Rate Impacts Deliverability?
The Ultimate Guide to Bounce Email In reality, a high bounce rate has several unfavourable repercussions that every marketer should be aware of:
1-Negative repute. Mailbox providers keep an eye out for IP addresses that send messages to ineligible users on a regular basis and alter the sender’s reputation accordingly.
2-Inbox placement is on the small side. Mailbox providers track bounce rates for each campaign you send and use that data to determine where your emails will be delivered in the future.
Additionally, many mailbox providers have been known to restrict the sender’s email domain if it is used repeatedly to send emails to non-existent domains.
3-The practice of blacklisting. Frequently observed high bounce rates result in the sender’s IP address being added to ISPs and anti-spam groups’ blacklists.
4-Suspended account. Email service companies adhere to a tight set of policies regarding bounce and complaint rates. They will suspend the user’s account if the user’s campaign generates a complaint rate that exceeds the ESP’s permitted threshold.
5-Money was misplaced. Providers of email services charge you for each message you send. Invalid email addresses drive up the cost of your email campaigns with little benefit to your ROI.
As a result, you now understand that you cannot ignore bounced emails and must address them following each email campaign.
3. Handling of Bounced Emails via an Email Service Provider
The Ultimate Guide to Bounce EmailMany marketers pick email service providers for their “hands-off” email system, which includes bounce email processing.
You just compose and send an email campaign to your subscribers. You then review your bounce reports.
The majority of providers supply you with a brief report that includes the following bounce email statistics:
- Difficult Bounces
- Gentle Bounces
– All-Purpose Bounces
Not particularly informative, is it? It most emphatically does not assist you in identifying and resolving any issues.
The biggest reason they do not provide a full bounce report is that you are frequently sharing transmitting IP addresses with hundreds or even thousands of other advertisers.
And the sending activity of one or more of them may result in issues with the IP address’s reputation or even in its blockage by certain mailbox providers. All of this can result in bounced emails.
Certainly, the ESP will address the issue promptly, but you will be unaware of it.
However, it gets worse:
You may lose SUBSCRIBERS WHO ARE ACTIVE.
As a result, email messages may “soft bounce.”
Following a certain number of soft bounces (often three or five), your email service provider will gladly remove those subscribers from your list.
Additionally, the majority of email service providers ignore the “soft bounce” reason and do not reset the “soft bounce” timer.
As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to processing bounced emails via an email service provider. Benefits include a simple “one-stop shop” solution.
Let us examine their response to bounced emails.
4. Handling Bounce Emails using an In-House Email System
The fundamental reason email marketers opt for an in-house email solution is to maintain data privacy and establish their own sender reputation without relying on third parties.
After installation and configuration, some in-house email systems will automatically process bounce emails and remove them from your list, while others will provide you with a list of bounces that you must manually remove from your subscriber base.
However, there are two major issues with processing bounce emails via an in-house email system:
- When the computer or server on which the system is installed is turned on, bounce emails are processed. That is, you do not always receive a real-time response to bounce emails.
- Providers of mailboxes frequently update their bounce diagnostic codes. So, the update can’t be installed until the software vendor releases it.
It has an effect on your sender’s overall reputation and deliverability. Invalid recipients are a significant factor in the decline of email reputation and Inbox placement.
As you can see, neither approach to bounce handling (through an ESP or an in-house system) is flawless.
However, here is the kicker:
Continue reading to discover the best bounce-handling solution that combines ease of use with great accuracy in tracking bounced emails.
5. The Most Effective Method for Dealing with Bounced Emails
As was previously said, if you employ an email service provider, you won’t have to worry about bounce email processing. However, if you manage an in-house email system and send big volumes of emails, it’s a good idea to outsource bounce email handling to a third-party service like as GlockApps.
Along with an email spam detector, GlockApps provides a robust bounce and feedback loop monitoring tool that provides detailed information about bounces and complaints.
The GlockApps Bounce Monitor collects and analyses real-time data on bounced communications. It gathers bounce emails and displays the bounce error code and cause for the bounce, allowing you to determine whether the email was a hard or soft bounce, a block, or a complaint. It categorizes bounces according to the sender’s email address and domain.
Additionally, it displays a graphic diagram so that you may visualize spikes in your bounce rate over time.
GlockApps retrieves the bounce email address and message ID of each email that generates a complaint, as well as, if available, the email addresses of the complainants, to assist you in identifying and removing problematic and non-existent recipients.
Additionally, GlockApps can parse bounce and complaint emails for custom header data.
Simply put, the Bounce Monitor analytics enables you to pinpoint the source of delivery failure and provide answers to critical queries such as the following:
Why are Gmail, Yahoo!, and other ISPs blocking my content or IP address?
How do I handle bounce messages?
How am I to resolve these issues?
Most importantly, by allowing you to get a list of invalid users’ email addresses, the GlockApps Bounce Monitor makes it exceedingly easy to process opt-out requests for invalid users. It’s essentially the wizardry of managing your bounces.
Every day, you may access the comprehensive and easy-to-read report to monitor your bounce and complaint statistics. Additionally, you can set email notifications to receive download links for reports via email.