How Someone Had Over a 90% Hard Bounce Rate on Just Over 5,000 Subscribers
Last week I shared what not to do with my email list. This was so compelling I thought I would share this here.
I did want to talk about a situation I ran into with a formal client. I want to use this example so you do not make this error in your business,
Taking the proactive approach is much better for your business.
I had a former client who came to me wanting to market his business. His budget at the time was reasonable ( That changed as time went on – a red flag).
He wanted to do e-mail marketing and social media marketing. I suggested he start with e-mail marketing because at the time it appeared he had a list of just over 5,000 subscribers. I explained social media its no longer post and they will come. Social Media takes a lot of work to build a large following and trust along this following.
Lets go back to the e-mail list. Right away I suggested I run the list through an e-mail validation service. I had big concerns about where The client did not want to pay for this service as he said he knew where the list came from. Personally I thought at the time it was a big mistake.
Services like Zerobounce do not cost a lot of money and are a great at what they do.
This is the second red flag with this customer. He was not taking good sound advice.
So I sent out the campaign. It was using MailChimp. The hard bounce rate was over 90%.
A hard bounce is an email that does not exist or the e-mail server rejected the incoming e-mail.
Once an e-mail address hard bounces you can not re-add the email manually. The former subscriber must re-subscribe.
To make this more interesting, the e-mails that did not hard bounce were marked mostly transactional e-mails only. In this case it means MailChimp will only send e-mails that are tied to Woo-Commerce transactions.
At the end of the day, this means the client does not have a good e-mail list. It is really that simple.
The more important thing is his domain and email address will end up on e-mail blacklists which will make it hard for him to do e-mail marketing down the rad. It is actually surprising that MailChimp did not freeze his account.
Over the last 14 years I have done a lot of e-mail marketing. I have managed a lot of larges lists – over 50K subscribers and never had bounce rates this high.
A summary of what went wrong and what should have been done:
- Always be sure of the validity of your email list.
- If you are unsure of the quality of the list, use a service like ZeroBounce to validate the list.
- Never purchase an e-mail list.
- Never just add emails to the list. In many jurisdictions, this is illegal.
- The only emails that should ever be on your list are those who have purchased from you or those who have opted in.,
- Once someone unsubscribes from your list, they must subscribe again to get back on the list.
- Once an email address hard bounces, they must subscribe again to get back on the list.
- Breaking email list rules can be breaking local laws. This could result in high fines or even more.
I have only shared this situation with you so that you do not make this mistake or do the wrong thing doing e-mail marketing. Your e-mail list is the one thing you own and control in addition to your website. Use it wisely.
If I can help in anyway, please email me at vip@stunningdigitalmarketing.com
