Is your email marketing getting through? Part 1 - hard bounces

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Earlier in the year, I attracted a new customer who asked me to manage their email marketing campaigns. They were sending a B2B monthly newsletter to over 2,000 global corporate customers. They were doing a good job using a basic email system. However, the quality of report data available was poor and nobody was spending much time doing any analysis.

Minimising hard bounces

When I did the first email campaign, there were a significant number of hard bounces indicating that many of the email addresses on their database were invalid or no longer live. For a customer database, especially a high value B2B database, this has to be a concern, as potentially, customers will not be getting your email communications announcing new products or special offers or changes in specifications etc.

As a result of my first email campaign report, my client investigated the hard bounces. In some cases, the email address was found to be incorrect and updated. In other cases, the individual had left the organisation and they were able to update their records with the correct contact. As a result of cleaning up the data, the hard bounces for each campaign are now less than 0.5% which means each month's follow up takes little time and they are reassured that their client database is in good shape.

Learning for companies big and small

• Review the hard bounce rate after broadcasting an email campaign
• Remove hard bounces from your mailing list to avoid ISP's considering you a potential spammer and blocking your broadcasts
• Depending on the volume & value to you of the recipients, consider contacting them (if you have their phone number) to update their contact details

If you need help in developing effective email campaigns that increase customer lifetime value then contact an email marketing expert.

Published 16th June, 2009

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