There’s a common myth about
e-mail deliverability that I want to debunk with this series. Deliverability is not based on an
inscrutable black art that only those schooled in its mysteries can possibly
fathom. That’s nonsense! At its core, good deliverability is nothing
more than good marketing. Sure, there are
some technical aspects to it, but what form of direct marketing doesn’t have
those? In my mind, deliverability is just
one of those aspects of the e-mail channel that a good direct marketer must
master. But it’s no mystery, and it's
totally understandable and manageable with the tools and data that a smart
bounce management system can provide.
Both the E-mail Experience
Council and JupiterResearch have reported that there’s a great deal of
inconsistency and confusion across our industry about bounces and how they
should be handled. So let’s demystify
deliverability by starting with the basics:What is a bounce? What’s the
difference between a hard and soft bounce and how do you tell them apart?
Simply put, a “bounce” is a
notice from the receiving ISP or domain that the e-mail you attempted to send
has not been delivered. Knowing that
much can help assess general campaign performance, but doesn’t begin to tell
you how to improve your results or give you the information needed to manage
your list or rectify the practices that may have caused the bounce in the first
place. You need to drill down into your
hard and soft bounces for those answers.
The ISPs and other domains
return a code and text message to the sender when an e-mail isn’t
delivered. What’s commonly termed a
“hard bounce” tells you that the reason for non-delivery is due to a permanent
condition, whereas a “soft bounce” indicates that the condition is probably
temporary. You may encounter a soft
bounce when a customer’s mailbox is full due to vacation or even when a domain
is temporarily not accepting mail because of technical problems. A soft bounce is telling you the e-mail
address is probably good but that delivery can’t be completed right now. You should try sending again at a later
date.
However, don’t assume the
opposite is true with a hard bounce. A
hard bounce does not automatically signify a bad (undeliverable) record
that shouldn’t be attempted again later on. Unlike the postal world where returned mail clearly equates to an
undeliverable address, such as “moved, left no forwarding address,” a hard bounce
in e-mail can mean many things. For instance,
some hard bounces, such as a spam block, tell you that the record should not be
re-tried until the underlying practice problem has been addressed. Others may relate to your technical
infrastructure, such as your DNS, authentication protocol or sending
speed. And still other hard bounces,
such as an unknown user, signify that the record is truly undeliverable, and
should be corrected or invalidated and replaced.
As with other forms of
direct marketing, successful e-mail marketing is all about learning from your
results and applying those lessons to your future efforts. In other words, it’s about the data. Without visibility into the reasons for
their bounces, e-mail marketers lack the data that’s the basis for those
learnings. They risk invalidating good
records while keeping bad, and not addressing the underlying practice
deficiencies that imperil their e-mail deliverability, brand reputations and
bottom lines. In short, it’s time for
e-mail marketers to stop being intimated by the mystic of deliverability. It’s time that they stop deferring to their
IT departments and service providers on this subject, and recognize smart
bounce management for what it truly is – a key resource for their e-mail
marketing effectiveness. E-mail
marketers need to become the masters of deliverability, not its subject and
certainly not its victim.
Dave Lewis is vice president of
market and product strategy for StrongMail
Systems.
