Summary
High bounce rates on Cyber Monday are primarily caused by poor list hygiene, sending to unengaged recipients, increased spam complaints, and inadequate IP warm-up. Prevention involves meticulous list cleaning (removing invalid and inactive addresses), ensuring permission-based marketing, implementing a sunset policy for inactive subscribers, proper bounce management (distinguishing between hard and soft bounces), gradual IP warm-up, active monitoring of sender reputation and spam complaints, segmenting lists by engagement, and email validation at signup. Analyzing SMTP error codes provides valuable insights for addressing deliverability issues, and holiday email ramp-up should be carefully controlled.
Key findings
- List Hygiene: Consistent list cleaning and validation are paramount to remove invalid, risky, and unengaged email addresses.
- Permission-Based Marketing: Obtaining explicit consent ensures that you're only sending to engaged subscribers.
- IP Warm-up: Gradually increasing sending volume helps establish a positive sending reputation.
- Segmentation and Sunset Policy: Segmenting lists by engagement and implementing a sunset policy for inactive subscribers improves deliverability.
- Bounce Management: Differentiating between hard and soft bounces and handling them appropriately is critical for sender reputation.
- Sender Reputation: Actively monitoring and maintaining a healthy sender reputation is essential for deliverability.
- Feedback Loops: Establishing feedback loops with ISPs helps identify and remove spam complainers.
- SMTP Error Codes: Analyzing SMTP error codes provides insights into specific delivery issues.
- Holiday Email Ramp-Up: Be cautious of email ramp-up over the holidays to minimize the potential triggering of spam filters.
Key considerations
- Data Validation: Ensure email addresses are validated at signup to prevent bad data from entering your list.
- List Age: Regularly assess the age and quality of your email list.
- Bounce Analysis: Analyze bounce codes and responses to understand specific reasons for delivery failures.
- Stakeholder Education: Communicate the importance of list hygiene and deliverability to stakeholders.
- Testing and Monitoring: Continuously test and monitor your email program to identify and address deliverability issues.
- Regular List Cleaning: Implement a consistent schedule for cleaning your email list.
- Compliance: Ensure you comply with email marketing regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM.
What email marketers say
10 marketer opinions
High bounce rates on Cyber Monday are often attributed to a combination of factors, including sending to outdated or unengaged lists, increased spam complaints, hitting spam traps, and failing to warm up IPs properly. Prevention strategies revolve around maintaining good list hygiene through regular cleaning and validation, obtaining explicit consent for email addresses, segmenting lists based on engagement, warming up IPs gradually, and monitoring sender reputation and spam complaints. Email ramp-up over the holidays can also cause bounce rates to increase.
Key opinions
- List Hygiene: Regular list cleaning (removing hard bounces, suppressing soft bounces) is critical.
- Permission-Based Marketing: Sending emails only to users who have given explicit consent reduces bounces and complaints.
- IP Warm-up: Gradually increasing sending volume on Cyber Monday establishes a positive sender reputation.
- Segmentation: Segmenting lists by engagement (sending to active users first) improves deliverability.
- Spam Complaints: High spam complaint rates correlate with increased bounce rates and decreased deliverability.
- Email Ramp-Up: Ramping up the volume of emails over the holidays can cause bounce rates to increase, triggering spam filters
Key considerations
- Bounce Codes: Analyze bounce codes/responses to understand specific reasons for delivery failures.
- List Analysis: Analyze email lists for inactive segments (e.g., worst 5%) to justify their inclusion.
- Stakeholder Communication: Demonstrate the impact of poor list hygiene to stakeholders using data and examples.
- Email Validation: Implement validation at signup to prevent bad addresses from entering the list.
- Ramp-Up Consideration: Be careful of email ramp-up over the holidays to minimise the potential triggering of spam filters.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor advises monitoring spam complaints. High spam complaint rates directly correlate with higher bounce rates and lower deliverability.
5 May 2023 - Campaign Monitor
Marketer view
Email marketer from Reddit shares that regular list cleaning is paramount. Remove hard bounces immediately and suppress serial soft bouncers after a few attempts.
2 May 2025 - Reddit
What the experts say
4 expert opinions
High bounce rates, especially on events like Cyber Monday, are significantly influenced by list hygiene and bounce management practices. Maintaining a clean and validated email list is critical; this includes immediate removal of hard bounces and careful handling of soft bounces. Additionally, implementing a sunset policy to remove inactive subscribers helps prevent deliverability issues. Consistently exceeding a 2% bounce rate indicates potential issues with email marketing practices.
Key opinions
- Bounce Management: Proper handling of hard and soft bounces is crucial for maintaining sender reputation.
- List Hygiene: Poor list hygiene, including old or unvalidated email addresses, significantly impacts bounce rates.
- Sunset Policy: Implementing a sunset policy for inactive subscribers reduces bounce rates and spam complaints.
- High Bounce Rate Indicator: A bounce rate exceeding 2% suggests underlying issues with email marketing practices.
Key considerations
- Data Validation: Ensure email addresses are validated to avoid deliverability problems.
- List Age: Be mindful of the age of your email list, as older lists often contain invalid addresses.
- Permission Practices: Verify that email addresses were obtained with proper permission to avoid deliverability issues.
- Third-Party Review: Consider using third-party services to review and clean your email data.
Expert view
Expert from Word to the Wise recommends implementing a sunset policy to remove inactive subscribers. Sending to unengaged recipients lowers engagement metrics and increases the risk of bounces and spam complaints.
8 Oct 2023 - Word to the Wise
Expert view
Expert from Spam Resource explains that careful bounce management is crucial for maintainability. It's important to distinguish between hard and soft bounces. Hard bounces should be removed immediately, while soft bounces should be retried a few times before removal. Proper bounce handling is vital for sender reputation.
3 Sep 2024 - Spam Resource
What the documentation says
5 technical articles
High bounce rates are influenced by deliverability failures, often rooted in issues addressed by email service providers' (ESPs) documentation. Understanding the difference between hard and soft bounces is essential for list management. Analyzing SMTP error codes provides specific insights into bounce reasons. Maintaining a strong sender reputation, as monitored through tools like Google Postmaster Tools, is critical. Regularly cleaning email lists, removing inactive subscribers, and setting up feedback loops with ISPs further enhances deliverability by addressing spam complaints and engagement metrics.
Key findings
- Bounce Types: Differentiating between hard (permanent) and soft (temporary) bounces is crucial for list hygiene.
- SMTP Error Codes: Analyzing SMTP error codes helps pinpoint specific reasons for email delivery failures.
- Sender Reputation: A strong sender reputation is essential for good deliverability and reduced bounce rates.
- List Cleaning: Regular list cleaning and removing inactive subscribers improves engagement and sender reputation.
- Feedback Loops: Setting up feedback loops with ISPs helps identify and remove spam complainers, improving deliverability.
Key considerations
- Hard vs Soft Bounces: Implement processes for managing hard bounces separately from soft bounces.
- Error Code Analysis: Establish a system for regularly reviewing SMTP error codes to identify recurring issues.
- Postmaster Tools: Actively monitor sender reputation using tools like Google Postmaster Tools.
- Engagement Metrics: Focus on improving engagement metrics to demonstrate the value of your email program to ISPs.
- ISP Relationships: Proactively work with ISPs through feedback loops to resolve deliverability issues and minimize bounces.
Technical article
Documentation from SendGrid explains that hard bounces typically indicate permanent delivery failures (invalid email address), while soft bounces are temporary issues (full mailbox). Understanding these distinctions is crucial for list hygiene.
10 Sep 2021 - SendGrid Documentation
Technical article
Documentation from Google explains that sender reputation is crucial for deliverability. Monitor your reputation in Google Postmaster Tools to identify and address potential issues.
1 Oct 2023 - Google
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