5 Quick Tips on How to Recover Bounced Email Addresses

Even with the best of lists bounced email happens. For those of you who don't know what a bounced email is, you send an email to an inbox, before it gets to the inbox the server checks to see if the email exists. If it doesn't exist, it bounces back.

If you're a VR customer you already know we handle those bounces for you. You also know that you won't mail them again (ISPs like AOL, and Hotmail don't like it when you keep mailing bounced email, they can tell). But what about if someone changed a job and forgot to notify you? Perhaps they changed ISPs and their new email is from comcast.com instead of yahoo.com.

Here are 5 quick tips on how to "recover" bounced email addresses. The first thing you'll want to do before anything else, is to download your bounced emails or get access to them somehow.

1. Eyeball them to make sure you don't have any misspellings. If you do you might want correct any spellings and re-load them.

2. If you've got phone numbers for them why not try to call them and get an updated email address. A carefully worded script might sound something like:

"Hi Anne, this is a quick call from Emily's Restaurant and we're updating our preferred customer list. We've noticed that the last time we sent you an email it bounced. Would you like us to update your email so you'll get our notifications of special events and chef's menu changes?"

Make sure there's a value you're providing in order for them to want your email. And if you're using something like Skype, more cost effective.

3. If you've got their postal address why not try sending them a postcard? Your content on the front might say say something catchy like:  "Where Did You Go, We Miss You!". Then the copy might sound something like:

"We've recently noticed that your email address has bounced! We hope you enjoy the email-only specials you've been getting and we would love for you to get them again. If you go to {Insert Web Page where you host an opt-in form} and update us on your email address, we'll email you a special offer of 50% savings on your next purchase!"

Testing out incentives for this is always a good idea. We've seen wineries that require email addresses to inform their customers of a pending wine club shipment. This is a great idea since someone has to know to be home to sign for the package.

4. Post something on your homepage. A simple link with an opt-in form telling people to re-sign up for your newsletter if they've moved is never a bad idea.

5. At your retail or professional location, have your sign-up book also say something like "Have You Moved or Changed Email Addresses? Make Sure You Tell Us!" This reminds your users that they may be missing something you're offering.

Bonus! - If you use a separate CRM system (ACT!, FileMaker, salesforce.com) and you're updating your contacts with new email addresses, make sure you either transfer a new list or update your information on your email lists, wherever they may live.

Ok, that does it, it's been a heck of a week, I hope these help. If anyone has any other ideas let's hear them!

 

Comments

[Perfumes]

Blogs are becoming the main source of knowing about things certainty, its importance, idolizing, either in a marketing way that one can differentiate.

[Wilton]

i wouldn't recommend survey monkey after I discovered a much better tool http://www.stellarsurvey.com which has better interface, more features, and more afforable

[Janine]

For Karen - Great ideas. Here are a few further suggestions:

For the survey use Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com), great easy-to-use, inexpensive tool. You can include the link for your survey in your VerticalResponse email you send out.

Regarding the full postal address you may want to think about "sending" a free gift in the mail if you can afford to. Then people are forced to give you more information.

Cheers!

[Karen Hochman]

Janine,

SOLUTION # 1: We have a weekly newsletter, so after 4 issues, we send a "How are you enjoying your newsletter?" email that asks for comments and an alternate e-mail address, with assurances that it will never be used for any reason except to reach them if their designated address is undeliverable. We don't have the bandwidth to send out many consumer mailings, but every time we do, we try to pick up another piece of information to fill out a traditional database. We get maybe a 20% response--largely because only 50% of readers open the email in the first place, and there is no incentive to respond. When we have more bandwitdth in the future, we will include an incentive to boost response. See Solution # 2 below.

I have a consumer e-newsletter and website that focuses on specialty (gourmet) foods for people who love fine food (TheNibble.com). People love our newsletter and we rarely have unsubscribes. Yet, we lose 25% of our newsletter list each year due to these 2 problems:

1) More than 50% of the people sign up at their work address. Our biggest problem is that people change jobs (or lose jobs) and don't think to resubscribe before they leave their old job. Because we are not a household name like Gourmet Magazine, perhaps they don't remember it and can't find us once they realize they're not getting their newsletter anymore; or intertia sets in and they don't resubscribe.

2) Our second biggest problem is the "over quota" or other temporary bounce-back problem that Dave asked about above. If there is a bounce-back, and the address on hold, the only way we can deal with that problem is to MANUALLY add the address back in to the active list. (A larger organization might take their list, write a program and add the addresses back in every week, measuring how often they bounce back until week x, when they remove them to the "permanent hold" list; but we don't have that capability.) Our process is: We personally write to the address (a group bcc) to see if the email box still exists.

Whether or not we hear back from the person, if the personal email doesn't bounce back, we'll manually re-add that person to our active list. The email explains that their newsletter bounced back and lets them know that they can find any issues they missed in our online archives. Some people write back to thank us, some people write back to unsubscribe, 98% we never hear from.

Because people may be away for an extended period or may be overwhelmed with work and not reading their recreational mail, we'll do this with a bounce-back address every 3 weeks for 3 months before we declare the address "dead."

Our list is only 10,000 so this only takes 2 hours a week.

SOLUTION #2: It would be an ideal world to have phone numbers and addresses of the people who receive a free email publication. Many people who sign up won't even give their real names (J. Smith, Dr. Bob and Baby Jane, e.g.). All we ask for during initial sign-up is is name, email address (twice for accuracy) and zip code, which at least lets us profile gender and geographic distribution of our readership. The challenge is, in a consumer e-publication, few people want to give you their full contact information, especially in these days of spam and identity theft.

The best way to add to your data is to offer a variety of incentives. Depending on your audience, some people will want information (download of a recipe or exercise book, white paper or industry data, e.g.), some will want graft (sweepstakes entry, free sample of perfume), some people will respond if you make a donation to the ASPCA. Keep offering different types of incentives to get your people to fill out their complete address and second email. Understand that people are sensitive to giving their phone, and many people may give dummy addresses, especially if there is no prize award where they need to be reached.

Good luck!

[Richard Huffaker - ISP Relations]

For Greg and Brian - If you have some previously bounced addresses that are now working, contact our support team at support@verticalresponse.com or 1-866-683-7842. They can help you quickly clear those addresses and start mailing them again.

For Dave - We can certainly get you the information showing why different addresses are bouncing. Send an email over to delivery@verticalresponse.com with your username and we'll pull all the recent bounce info for you. Anyone else can feel free to do the same, of course!

For Richard - Any email noted as "bounced" within your mailing list won't be mailed again, so there is no need to upload a list with updated addresses. All bounced (and unsubscribed addresses) are removed from your list before launch - you'll see a report right above the launch button detailing this - so that you neither mail them or pay to mail them. Note too that if you upload a new list all previous unsubscribes and bounces will be scrubbed from that list during the upload process.

Hope this info helps!

[Jason Billingsley]

I contacted support, and they cleared my bounce suppression list - we had 100% legit emails that had bounced for whatever reason (our own CEO for instance) and were being omitted from our mailings. VR will help you. Some of the best customer support I have ever received (and we deal/have dealt with a lot of vendors).

[Brian]

What if the users email bounced due to an extended IT issue. The email is now active again, but VR is not sending to that address any longer -how can I get it back on the list? Thank you!

[Richard]

This was very timely as I just sent the first email newsletter for my wife's flower shop. The list was compiled from a lot of different sources and many emails were outdated and bounced.

If I edit the info from the list view and update the email, it still says "Bounced" does that mean it won't be resent? Or should I import them again with the updated email addresses?

Thanks
Richard

[Dave Devoe]

Is there a way that VR can tell me which addresses that bounced are bad & which are due to things like a server problem or a full mailbox? That would be gold for myself & my firm.

[Greg Walter]

I have email addresses on my subscriber list that bounce every once in a while due to "over quota" or other issues that don't necessarily reflect a closed account or invalid address. How can I mail to them in the future since they have come back as bounced?

Greg Walter