Have you had an issue sending an email campaign in Thryv Business Center™? Does this message below look familiar to you?
In this article, we will help you understand why you receive this message and how you can avoid it.
What is a bounce rate?
In email marketing campaigns, the bounce rate refers to the percentage of email addresses in your client list that didn't receive your message due to it being rejected by the recipient's email server. There are two categories of an email bounce, which include hard bounce and soft bounce. Let's talk about the difference between the two below:
Soft Bounce
A soft bounce usually means that the email address was valid and the email made it to the server. However, it may bounce back to you for the following reasons:
- The server for the client's email was down. (This could be for any unknown variety of reasons.)
- The message was too large to be sent.
- The mailbox for your recipient was full. (User is over quota.)
Soft bounce emails will continue to be automatically sent to the recipients email server for 72 hours before it would be added to a block list, preventing you from sending any additional emails to the address.
Hard Bounce
A hard bounce is an indication that the message has been permanently rejected due to:
- The email address not existing.
- The email address no longer being valid.
Thryv Business Center knows when you have a bad email that is sent, but only after the fact. At this time, we do not have a way to scrub your email lists for you, and our current High-Thryv recommendation would be to keep in close contact with your customers to ensure that their email addresses are always up-to-date. You can keep a running list for customers to update their email address every time they visit your place of business, or ask during a time of service for updated contact information. You can also use a third party tool for email list scrubbing. Please note that these third party tools are helpful, but may or may not have additional fees and may still miss some emails on your list. Email scrubbing is a process, and is not yet nailed down to a perfect science.
You can view which emails bounced in a campaign by navigating to that campaign and clicking on View Stats. On the page that appears, click on bounced to show the emails that bounced. For a full guide to scrubbing these bounced emails, click here.
What Can I Do To Prevent Email Bounces?
There are a few pretty easy things we can help you do in order to keep your bounce rate under 3% which is just slightly above industry standard.
- Do not purchase email lists. We know this can sound like tough love, but it's true. Email delivery responsibility falls on the shoulders of the sender, not the Internet Service Provider or the Email Service Provider. Paying a third party for a large email list ruins your email marketing and is possibly illegal. This depends on how the third-party acquired the list. Most are not keen on telling you where it came from so your best course of action is to opt-out of purchasing.
- Purge! Ask your customers at the point of sale if the email address you have for them is still correct and update accordingly. Track your email delivery rates (we even have an article on how to do that here) to see how many people are opening your email campaigns and responding by clicking on a link or replying back via your client portal. Be sure to delete any email addresses that are no longer valid. Click Here for a full guide to scrubbing bounced emails!
- Confirm Your Subscribers. Send a confirmation email when a client signs up for email marketing from your business. Automated Campaigns can be set up to welcome a brand new lead or customer, and you'll know right away if the email is good or bad.
- If you feel that you have exceeded your bounce rate in error and you need to reset your bounce rate, contact support at 844-998-4798 or send an email to support@thryv.com
Different Error Types:
There are four different error types that you will see to explain why a campaign failed. You will find this under your Delivery History.
- "You've exceeded the bounce rate or spam rate limit" Contact support@thryv.com
- "You've exceeded your monthly recipient limit" Requires an upgrade
- "You've exceeded your monthly SMS limit" Requires an upgrade
- "Could not be delivered - technical issues" Contact support@thryv.com
Additional Tips
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Optimize Your Campaigns
- Make sure you use consistent imagery so your clients/customers will know immediately you are someone they trust.
- Keep the messaging clear and concise to limit the need for scrolling through an email. This helps to keep your clients/customers focused on your message.
- Test the email by sending to yourself. This way, you'll know how your clients/customers are seeing your message, and you can make any adjustments needed.
- Use effective Subject Lines.
- Stay on topic. Make sure whatever message you are sending will be meaningful to your clients/customers.
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Know your Bounce Rate Percentage
- Thryv Business Center will lock your email campaigns at 3% and above. The industry standard is less than 2%, so we try our best to give you more wiggle room. Knowing how many email recipients you have and taking out 3% of that will tell you exactly how many emails would need to bounce back in order to lock you out of your email campaigns. Following the guidelines we described above will help you stay under the limit so your campaigns can be sent freely!
How Do I Reset My Bounce Rate?
There is not a way to reset your bounce rate on your own within Thryv Business Center. To reset your bounce rate, contact our support team, by calling 844-998-4798, or send an email to support@thryv.com and request for your bounce rate to be reset. Our team will investigate what caused the bounce rate to be exceeded and provide guidance on how to avoid doing so in the future.
For more information on the CAN-SPAM Act, see this article here.
Do you have questions about Email Bounce rates? If you've been blocked from sending email campaigns, you can also contact us for assistance by following this article on how to use our Support Button.
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