Whether you're sending emails from MS Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, or your account, if you send lots of emails to invalid email addresses, those emails will bounce.
Sending emails to invalid email addresses will have a negative impact on both your individual and company's sending reputation.
What does a poor sending reputation mean?
Your emails are more likely to end up in someone's SPAM box.
Your company and colleagues emails are more likely to end up in someone's SPAM box.
Your domain, the bit which goes before .com or .co.uk, can get blacklisted or suspended.
How can you see your Bounce Rates?
If you go to Campaigns > Sent - you will be able to see all of the stats of your recent campaigns. Here's what to look for and why:
Bounce - On the far right in yellow is the number of emails that bounced in the last sent campaign.
SPAM - This is the number of recipients who actively marked your email as SPAM. Getting marked as SPAM is a fast and hard route to harming your send reputation.
Unsub(scribes) - This is the number of people who unsubscribed from your email and is a good general indicator of how relevant your email/content is for this audience.
How do Bounces happen?
There are two types of bounces: hard and soft.
Hard Bounces - these occur when an email address is invalid. Either it no longer exists or it is incorrect. An email address that hard bounces should be regarded as expired and removed from your system or opted out of your future email campaigns.
Soft Bounces - the email address is valid but did not reach the recipient for any number of reasons. Examples include a full inbox, a temporarily unreachable mail server, or the message being too large.
How do you reduce bounces and maintain a good sender reputation?
Managing your sender reputation and bounces can be achieved using a few best practice techniques:
Maintain good list hygiene - whether you've had your data for years or have acquired data through a third party, it is your responsibility to ensure that the emails in your system are valid and up-to-date. There are a number of tools you can use to validate your email addresses. See Neverbounce - this tool checks your email addresses to ensure they are still active. This help keep your SalesSeek data valid and ensures that your data sources are providing you with valuable leads.
Monitor your email delivery -track your email delivery rates by paying close attention to your bounce rates and response rates. With regular monitoring, you can catch potential failures before they happen or before they do too much damage.
Please take note: It is the responsibility of each account to manage and maintain their email list hygiene and sender reputation. If your sender reputation becomes poor you risk:
Email send throttling - this means the system will automatically limit the number of emails you can send per hour/day to ensure the quality of your email.
Account suspension - for high SPAM/bounce senders, their emailing capabilities will be automatically suspended by the system.
Account termination - for repeat high SPAM/bounce senders who breach our terms and conditions policy, both their email sending capabilities and account can be terminated.
If you have more questions about sending reputation or bounce rates, please get in touch with the team.