Bounce rates measure the percentage or the frequency your emails are “bounced” back to you. In other words, the email can not reach the intended recipient and, therefore, must be returned to the sender with a notification of its returned status. Just like the physical mail.
From a superficial view it is unfortunate, but not so serious if 10-15% of the prospects do not receive our communications. That’s what large databases are created for, right?
But deep down it is serious, and in this article we explain why and how to refute it.
The theory of bounce rate
We must difference between the three types of bounce and its impacts:
Soft bounce (or in some tools just Bounce): A soft bounce is an error of temporary delivery error related to the inbox server: inbox full, message too heavy, server temporary unavailable… However, the email address is correct.
Action: shoot again.
Hard Bounce (or Invalid): We talk about hard bounce when an email address is not valid. There are a few reasons for this: or a typographic error in the email address, or the contact is not longer part of the company, or the email address is fake.
Action: delete the email address and do not shoot again. If you have the valid tools, email guessing or web scrapping, keep going.
Reject/Refuse Bounce – it occurs when the email servers identify an email address as not requested and some of them have recently implemented automatic rules of rejection/ refuse. Most of the tools do not distinguish it.
Action: follow the next recommendations and shoot again.
The action plan in 7 steps to lower your bounce rate
1. Set up your own domain.
Market tools are using common domains that carry over mistakes and bad practices from previous users. You do not want to automatically fall into spam without ever having done anything, do you?
2. Set up your personalised tracking domain that is the same as the domain that sends the emails.
Why it is so important?
Let’s see, this one is a bit complicated. If the domain you are using to send the emails is different from the one that counts the open rates and the clicks on the links, it is more likely that the emails will be identified as unsolicited.
You must not send the campaigns with, for example, [email protected] and make the open tracking and the clicks with track.any.link.net.
3. If you can, avoid the Vanity KPI.
In the first days of the launch of the cold mailing campaign, it is important to measure its effectiveness (open rate, click rate) and adjust it until a minimum open rate of 60%-70% is achieved.
Once the goal is reached, this information has no operational use and it becomes only what we call “Vanity KPI”, for yourself or to put into reports. But, what does it matter, deliverability or paper numbers?
If you remove the tracking, the deliverability will increase, and so will the results. Since your bulk mailer tool will not be using the third party link to track the opening and the clicks and, therefore, the emails will not market as unsolicited.
4. If you can, use your real work email. If not, do not skip the warm-up.
There are two ways. In classic emailing, it may be advisable to create a new domain similar to your usual domain (for example, HelloMrsLead.com), and then “warm up the sending email address”, by progressively sending an increasing number of emails each day.
Another way is to use the email address you are already using professionally on a daily basis. That is, an email address that sends and above all receives letters, one that already has a history and where there is no need to heat it up.
In summary, your actual work email address.
5. Configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC indicators.
These protocols are technologies used to protect the sending system, in particular to authenticate and legitimise and email and its sender.
SPF and DKIM are the minimum to set up and there are many tutorials and publications on the web that describe and explain how to do it (for example, this one is so detailed). Without them the server cannot confirm that your email has not been intercepted or altered during the transmission or that your address has not been falsified.
However, the configuration of DMARC has become a decisive element since June 2020 in the criteria for detecting unsolicited emails. It is used as a contributor to the anti-abuse controls of a domain.
6. Validate the emails before entering them in the database.
To obtain a good open rate and a good outbound campaign deliverability, you should start by sending the emails to a maximum of valid, fully verified addresses.
How is this done? With an email validation solution. There are many on the market. We at HelloMrLead use Scrapp.io, uProc, ColdCRM and some others.
7. Customize the Unsubscribe link
Although with the new personal data protection regulations (known as GDPR) it is compulsory to include the possibility of unsubscribing and not receiving any more emails, if you use at it is the word “Unsubscribe” will be detected as an indicator of undesirable and unsolicited email (Reject/Refuse, remember?).
Be smart. Change the sentence, personalise it, and you will also generate more confidence and the most sincere aspect of the email. And do not put this link at the end, as that is where the robot will be looking for it.
