Why am I seeing bounce rate spikes on campaigns attributed to Verizon Media Group?

Key findings

• Provider identification: Verizon Media Group refers primarily to Yahoo and AOL email properties.
• AT&T connection: Some AT&T email delivery is handled by Verizon's infrastructure, meaning AT&T-related issues might manifest as Verizon Media Group bounces.
• Reputation impact: Bounce rate spikes often stem from changes in sender reputation, which can be triggered by sending to problematic audiences or a sudden increase in complaints.
• Address decommissioning: ISPs (including Verizon Media Group) regularly decommission abandoned or unused email addresses, which can lead to a sudden increase in hard bounces.

Key considerations

• Bounce message analysis: Always obtain and thoroughly analyze the specific bounce messages. These messages are designed by ISPs to provide clear reasons for delivery failures, offering the most direct path to resolution.
• Audience review: Examine recent changes to your email list segmentation and targeting, especially for campaigns sent to Yahoo, AOL, and AT&T domains. An unexpected spike in email bounce rates can often be traced back to list quality.
• List hygiene: Implement or review your active processes for purging inactive or stale email addresses from your lists. This is crucial for maintaining a healthy sender reputation and reducing future bounces, especially for Verizon (Yahoo, AOL) addresses.
• ISP contact: If you identify a persistent issue and have analyzed the bounce messages, reach out to the contact address provided in the bounce or use the Yahoo Postmaster page (postmaster.yahoo.com) to open a ticket.

Key opinions

• Unexpected spikes: Even highly targeted email segments can experience sudden, unexplained bounce rate increases, suggesting broader ISP or infrastructure changes may be at play.
• Classification concerns: Marketers frequently question how their ESPs classify different mailbox providers (e.g., AT&T versus Verizon Media Group) as this impacts their ability to accurately diagnose problems.
• Data importance: Access to specific bounce messages and detailed deliverability reports is crucial for marketers to understand and address issues effectively.
• List health: An outdated or poorly maintained audience is a common cause cited for high bounce rates, indicating a need for regular list cleaning.

Key considerations

• Proactive monitoring: Maintain vigilant monitoring of bounce rates across different mailbox providers to quickly identify anomalies, helping to ensure your bounce rate percentage remains within healthy limits.
• ESP collaboration: Work closely with your ESP’s deliverability team to understand their internal classifications and troubleshoot any misattributions of bounce data.
• Audience management: Prioritize regular list hygiene and segmentation reviews. If you are struggling with engagement metrics, improving your list quality is key to increasing email click-through rates and overall deliverability.
• Seek community input: Leverage deliverability communities and forums to gain insights from peers who may be experiencing similar issues, as collective intelligence can often shed light on new or emerging trends.

Key opinions

• Provider aliases: Experts confirm Verizon Media Group refers to Yahoo and AOL. Some AT&T email domains also use Verizon for mailbox delivery.
• Reputation focus: Bounce spikes are frequently linked to sender reputation issues, necessitating a review of audience targeting and sending practices.
• Bounce message necessity: The actual bounce message is invaluable; ISPs craft these to provide precise reasons for rejection, making it the primary diagnostic tool.
• List hygiene importance: Maintaining a clean email list by regularly removing invalid or inactive addresses is crucial to avoid hard bounces, especially with providers that decommission old accounts.
• Delisting processes: Being listed on a major blocklist can severely impact delivery, requiring careful adherence to delisting procedures.

Key considerations

• Read the bounce: No troubleshooting should begin without the exact bounce message. It directly informs the nature of the deliverability problem.
• Contact postmasters: Directly engage with ISP postmaster teams (e.g., Yahoo) for assistance, especially for persistent issues or when the bounce message provides a contact point. Addressing AT&T block bounces might involve contacting Yahoo.
• Address list churn: Regularly cleanse your email lists to remove inactive accounts. This practice helps to mitigate hard bounces resulting from ISPs decommissioning old addresses and supports overall sender reputation, which can affect Yahoo and AOL engagement rates.
• Analyze sending patterns: Understand that reputation is dynamic, influenced by how recipient mail servers perceive your sending behaviors over time, not just static list quality.

Key findings

• SMTP error codes: RFCs (e.g., RFC 5321) define various SMTP reply codes (e.g., 5xx for permanent failures) that indicate the specific reason for a bounce, from invalid recipients to policy rejections.
• ISP policies: Mailbox providers publish documentation outlining their acceptable use policies, sender guidelines, and postmaster contact procedures, which can vary and impact deliverability.
• Authentication standards: Protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are crucial for email authentication, and their proper configuration is detailed in technical documentation to ensure messages are trusted and not blacklisted or blocked.
• List management: Documentation often emphasizes the importance of maintaining clean and engaged subscriber lists to minimize bounces and improve sender reputation.

Key considerations

• Error code interpretation: Familiarize yourself with common SMTP bounce codes and their meanings to quickly identify the nature of delivery failures. This is discussed in RFCs and related email standards.
• Adhere to guidelines: Consistently review and adhere to the specific postmaster guidelines published by major ISPs like Yahoo/AOL. These guidelines dictate acceptance criteria and provide contact information for support.
• Authentication integrity: Ensure your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are correctly configured and aligned with documented best practices to prevent authentication failures that can lead to bounces or blocklisting. Consult guides on email blocklists for more.