Reporting - Bounce rates

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1 Reporting - Bounce rates An that doesn't get delivered, is referred to as bounced. The bounce rate refers to the percentage of addresses in your contact list that didn t receive your message because it was returned by the mail server of a recipient. s can bounce for many reasons: The address is incorrect or the account has been closed The recipient's mailbox is full The mail server is down The receiving system detects spam or offensive content Hard bounces are the most important to pay attention to. Specifically, the Unknown User is the most important hard bounce metric to look at, since it determines the quality of the addresses in your list. Bounce Types Hard Bounce: sent to an address where the message cannot be delivered, due to a permanent failure. This can be due to users abandoning their account, mailing to an address that has never existed, or a domain that does not exist. The first two cases are User Unknown and the last being Domain Unknown. Hard bounces should not be retried because the error is considered permanent. Soft Bounce: sent to an active (live) address that is turned away before being delivered. Often, the problem is temporary - the server is down or the recipient's mailbox is over quota. Soft Bounces can also be caused by temporary blockages at ISPs, due to complaints or long grey listing periods.

2 An easy way to reduce the amount of bounces: Do a list clean up! Contact us for a quote here What is included in the "Bounced/Not Delivered" category? You can review a full reports and statistics, 24 hrs after you have made your send. The Bounced/Not delivered category includes: 1. User Unknown, means that the user does not exist 2. Domain Unknown, means that the domain does not exist/registered. 3. Mailbox Full, web based service providers have a limit on the amount of s that can be stored, the mailbox has exceeded this limit and therefore your could not be delivered. 4. Spam Trapped, the content of your is considered spam by the recipients provider. 5. Other, there is no specific reason as to why the had not been delivered. sending how do I know when it goes? Each mailing you send takes just a few minutes to prepare before we begin sending. If you SEND a mailing and are not sure whether the mailing actually was sent, go to the Reports & Statistics Menu > View by Sends submenu. If you see your send there, then the send has been queued for delivery, so you do not need to resend. If you do not see an entry, then the send has not gone out and you can try to resend. In any event, our system will not let you send to the same mailing list within a 20 minute period of a previous send. We do this in order to reduce the likelihood of sending to a list twice. Our system does not send to any Unsubscribed or Hard Bounced addresses on a list. As a result, if you send to a list of 1,000 people the total sent may be only 990. We only try to reach the active members of the list and your totals for delivered and bounced should equal this amount. It may take between hours to fully tabulate the results as we continue to try to reach people over a period of hours and sometimes days if the first attempts fail.

3 Are your Images getting blocked by Clients? Are your Images getting blocked by Clients? Desktop and Webmail Clients block newsletter images in different ways. For example, one client might block images by default, another might require the user to turn on image blocking manually. Let s take a look at both the current default settings for Desktop Clients and Webmail Clients: Desktop Clients: Apple Mail, ThunderBird, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, Eudora, and Entourage have image display ON. Outlook 2003/2007 and AOL have image display OFF. Webmail Clients: Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Mail Beta,.Mac, Hotmail and AOL have image display ON. Gmail and Windows Live Mail both have image display OFF.

4 When the default is set to OFF, there will be an option in Desktop or Webmail Clients, (similar to our Gmail example below) to Display images below. Please note that this prompt will be different for every client. Here are a set of guidelines to follow, to help maximize your open rates: Firstly, ensure that you are following the CanSpam Act guidelines. What this means, in short, is that each and every mail you send out should contain an Unsubscribe link and the physical address of your business. All mail sent needs to be permission-based. If you DO NOT have explicit permission to send your newsletter to the recipient, then refrain from doing so, or risk legal repercussions. If you do have permission to send to your recipient, then the chances are higher that your newsletter will be opened.

5 Your newsletter should not just consist of one image. Try maintaining a good balance between HTML and images. This will contribute to the readability of your mail. For example; if images get blocked you know you are on the safe side, since your recipient will still be able to read the rest of the newsletter without becoming confused. It s good practice to have alt tags for your images which briefly describe what they represent, in the event of that they are blocked. Try keeping your mail as lightweight as possible. To cater for the demographic still operating on old school 56K internet lines, don t try and cram too much content into one newsletter (spanning over many pages) as your recipient would need to download all of it first, before being able to view it. Your newsletter should pass common Spam filter tests. Within your account, you can run a Spamscore check, based on SpamAssassin s checks, which is one of the most common Spam filters out there. If your score is high, it s bad for your deliverability. And if it s low, you re good to go. Ensure that your score is below 5.0. If it is higher, chances are that your mail will get marked as spam, and won t reach your reader s inbox. So refine your newsletter and subject line, to get your score as low as possible. Capture your recipients with your content. Your subject line is the first thing your subscriber will see and is the entry point to your newsletter. This, along with the rest of your content, should be kept as brief, uncomplicated and captivating as possible communicating the most essential information first and calling readers to pursue their interests for further information by clicking on links to your website or other designated landing pages. Don't over-use uppercase characters, phrases such as 'SPECIAL, BUY NOW' and other common spam-like keywords, as these can cause your mail to be easily misclassified.

6 Ask your subscribers to add your from address to their address book. Many clients enable image display if your from address is added to your recipient s address book, since this would highlight you as a trusted contact. Follow the fundamental newsletter design best practices. If your newsletter template is being designed externally, make sure the code in your newsletter is ISS-based ( Inline Style Sheets ) and not CSS-based ( Cascading Style Sheets ) to have greater browser support for your newsletter.