Summary
When an email service provider (ESP) or internet service provider (ISP) shuts down its email services for certain domains, it can significantly impact your email database. These domains, such as wanadoo.es, amena.es, or mixmail.com, will no longer be able to receive mail, leading to hard bounces. Proactively addressing this issue is crucial to maintain a healthy sender reputation and effective email deliverability.
Key findings
- Hard bounces: Emails sent to defunct domains will result in hard bounces, which negatively affect your sender reputation and could lead to your domain being put on a blocklist or blacklist.
- List hygiene: Domain shutdowns contribute to email database decay, making regular list hygiene essential to ensure your contacts are valid. More information about this can be found at EmailOversight's article on database decay.
- ESP flagging: High bounce rates can trigger reviews or flags from your email service provider, potentially disrupting your sending capabilities.
- Cost efficiency: Continuing to send to invalid addresses costs money, especially if your ESP charges per attempt.
- User experience: Proactive communication and timely removal of invalid contacts improve the overall user experience and subscriber retention.
Key considerations
- Pre-emptive action: Instead of waiting for hard bounces, identify and address affected email addresses before the domain shutdown. This is a key part of best practices for switching domains.
- Communicate with subscribers: Reach out to affected subscribers, informing them of the upcoming change and asking them to update their email addresses. For more on this, review how a domain change affects deliverability.
- Final notice: Send a last email a few days before the shutdown, explaining that you will no longer be able to reach them via their old address.
- Data removal: Unsubscribe or remove all contacts associated with the defunct domains from your database the day before the service ends.
- Legal compliance: Be mindful of regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act, which govern commercial email practices.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often face challenges with maintaining clean subscriber lists, especially when domains unexpectedly shut down. The consensus among marketers is that proactive management is key to mitigating negative impacts on deliverability and preserving sender reputation. While some ESPs automatically handle hard bounces, taking manual steps can prevent immediate issues and demonstrate better list hygiene practices.
Key opinions
- Pre-emptive unsubscribing: Marketers generally agree that unsubscribing contacts before a known domain shutdown is preferable to waiting for hard bounces, even if ESPs would eventually handle them.
- Reputation protection: Avoiding bounces directly contributes to better sender reputation. High bounce rates can lead to account flags or reviews by ESPs, impacting future deliverability, as detailed in our guide on understanding your email domain reputation.
- Cost implications: Sending to invalid addresses can incur unnecessary costs if your ESP charges per email attempt.
- User retention: Proactive communication with subscribers helps retain their engagement even after a domain change, reducing database decay as discussed by Emailable regarding list data issues.
Key considerations
- Audience segmentation: Identify and segment subscribers using the affected domains to tailor specific communications for them.
- Re-opt-in campaigns: Launch campaigns asking these subscribers to provide a new, active email address to continue receiving your communications. This can be part of a broader strategy for changing your email domain.
- Timely removal: Schedule the removal of these email addresses from your active lists just before the shutdown date.
- Internal education: Educate your team on the importance of proactive list hygiene to avoid future deliverability issues.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests that marketers should proactively send communications to subscribers with affected domains, asking them to re-opt-in with their new email address. This step ensures continued engagement and prevents loss of contact.
Marketer view
Marketer from Quora explains that when a domain no longer exists, emails sent to it will be returned by the sending server as there's nothing to receive them. The sender will be notified, typically via a hard bounce.
What the experts say
Email deliverability experts highlight that domain shutdowns, while seemingly isolated incidents, underscore the continuous need for vigilant list management and understanding email infrastructure changes. They advocate for proactive measures to safeguard sender reputation and ensure email programs remain effective, emphasizing that robust hygiene practices are always paramount.
Key opinions
- Proactive hygiene: Experts stress that proactive list hygiene, rather than reactive cleaning, is fundamental. This includes removing defunct email addresses promptly.
- Reputation defense: Minimizing hard bounces is critical for protecting sender reputation. Unnecessary bounces can lead to your domain or IP being put on a blocklist (or blacklist), which significantly impacts deliverability, as covered in our guide on blacklists.
- ISP-provided addresses: The phasing out of ISP-provided email addresses is often viewed as a positive development for email ecosystem health, as it encourages use of more stable, permanent addresses.
- Understanding traffic patterns: It is important for senders to analyze their own logs to determine the percentage of traffic going to specific domains. This helps in assessing the potential impact of a shutdown.
Key considerations
- Continuous monitoring: Implement continuous monitoring of bounce rates and deliverability metrics to quickly identify and react to domain-related issues. Our checklist for deliverability testing can assist with this.
- Automated processes: Leverage ESP features for automatic bounce handling, but do not solely rely on them; combine with manual intervention for known shutdowns.
- Data validation tools: Utilize email validation services to regularly clean your lists and identify invalid or dormant addresses before they cause issues.
- Strategic communication: Develop a communication plan for similar future events, including clear instructions for subscribers to update their contact information.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks affirms the importance of list hygiene, especially when facing known domain shutdowns. He indicates that a proactive approach to cleaning lists is always beneficial for deliverability.
Expert view
Expert from Spam Resource highlights that email deliverability success hinges on actively managing your recipient list to prevent bounces and maintain a positive sender reputation. Domains going offline require immediate action.
What the documentation says
Official documentation and research often highlight the technical implications of domain obsolescence and the need for data integrity. They emphasize the importance of adhering to communication guidelines, understanding email routing mechanisms, and maintaining up-to-date subscriber information to prevent delivery failures and remain compliant with industry standards.
Key findings
- Email database decay: Documentation confirms that domain changes and expired domains are significant factors contributing to the deterioration of email list data over time.
- Sender notification: When a domain no longer exists, the sending server will return the email, notifying the sender of the delivery failure. This is standard email protocol.
- Regulatory compliance: Commercial email senders must comply with regulations that include requirements for managing email lists and honoring unsubscribe requests, even for defunct addresses. The CAN-SPAM Act is one such regulation.
- Domain ownership: Regulations may require domain account holders to confirm their email information; otherwise, their domain may be deactivated, which affects associated email addresses.
Key considerations
- Email validation tools: Documentation often recommends using email validation tools to identify invalid emails in a database, verifying which ones are no longer active.
- DNS records: Ensuring proper DNS records (like MX records) for your sending domains is crucial to avoid rejections from major mailbox providers. This is also important when switching from a primary domain to a subdomain.
- Data management: Periodically query your email database to identify and segment email addresses associated with specific domains that may be at risk of shutdown. Learn more about identifying misspelled domains.
- Hosting and domain continuity: For businesses closing, documentation suggests keeping the domain name active to manage redirects or avoid future issues, even if website files are deleted.
Technical article
Documentation from Email Oversight indicates that using an email validation tool helps verify which emails in a database are invalid. This is crucial for managing email database decay effectively.
Technical article
Documentation from Emailable highlights that domain changes or expired domains are often overlooked reasons why email list data goes bad, particularly in the B2B sector.
Related resources
8 resources
Related pages
What are the best practices for switching to a new sending domain?
How do you migrate an email sending domain from one platform to another?
How does a domain change affect email deliverability and what steps should be taken to prevent issues like Gmail warnings?
How can I resolve high bounce rates and 'mailbox unavailable' errors for a specific domain?
What happens when your domain is on an email blacklist?
Why your emails are going to spam in 2024 and how to fix it
How to run an email deliverability test: A proven checklist
Spam traps: what they are and how they work
A practical guide to understanding your email domain reputation
Email deliverability issues: Getting your messages to the inbox in 2025
