Reporting - Bounce rates
An email that doesn't get delivered, is referred to as “bounced”. The “bounce rate” refers to the percentage of email addresses in your contact list that didn’t receive your message because it was returned by the mail server of a recipient.
Emails can bounce for many reasons:
The email 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: Email sent to an address where the message cannot be delivered, due to a permanent failure. This can be due to email 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.
An easy way to reduce the amount of bounces:
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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 email service providers have a limit on the
amount of emails that can be stored, the mailbox has exceeded this limit and therefore your email could not be delivered.
4. Spam Trapped, the content of your email is considered spam by the recipients email provider.
5. Other, there is no specific reason as to why the email had not been delivered.
Email 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.
Are your Images getting blocked by Email Clients?
Are your Images getting blocked by Email Clients?
Desktop and Webmail Clients block email newsletter images in different ways. For example, one email 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 Email 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.
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 email 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.
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 email 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 email 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
Ask your subscribers to add your ‘from address’ to their address book.
Many email 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.
