Running a top-notch email marketing campaign can bring your company to the next level, providing value to your customer base and increasing profit. Of course, you already know this, and have perfected the basics of email marketing. By now you know it takes more than just adding names to a list – you also need to check the quality of your list in order to avoid a hard bounce. But first, you must understand what a hard bounce is. Fortunately, we’ve explained it all here.
What is an email bounce?
Imagine sitting at the computer writing (or editing) the perfect article for your email marketing campaign. You polish it off, making it perfect for your loyal audience. But when you look at the numbers, you find that only a percentage of the emails you’ve sent out make it to valid email addresses. **The rest get returned to you, or bounced back, by recipient mail servers. **
Soft bounces vs. hard bounces
Some bounces happen due to a temporary issue – called a soft bounce. Typically a soft bounce means the email can’t reach the recipient because its mailbox is full, or its email exchange server is down. In the event of a soft bounce, you can always try resending the email later. In any case, it doesn’t indicate an invalid email address.
On the other hand, if the problem isn’t temporary, you have a hard bounce on your hands. A hard bounce happens when you send an email to an address that’s invalid, or doesn’t exist. It bounces back to you and never makes it to the potential customer.
Now you know what hard bounces are and want to avoid them. You might be thinking – sure, I get it. But I’m busy writing content and analyzing numbers – can’t I deal with it later?
Why act sooner rather than later
Remember that beautifully crafted article I mentioned above? Why put in all that effort only to have a bunch of emails returned to you? Odds are your marketing campaign could be more effective with quality feedback coming in. If your emails don’t reach potential customers you miss a huge opportunity and hurt your bottom line.
On a more serious note, consider this: the higher your bounce rate, the greater the impact on your sender score. Don’t put this off.
How to avoid a hard bounce
Chances are you’ve grown your email marketing list over time. You don’t want to start from scratch – you just need to clean the email list you currently have.
Clean it with Verifalia – we use cutting edge technology to flag and filter any invalid email addresses. We do this without sending any test emails or disrupting your workflow.
We also keep testing any temporary issues (soft bounces) so that you don’t have to. In the meantime you can focus on email marketing, with peace of mind that the emails you send will make it to the right place, leading to satisfied customers and increased revenue.
What next?
Now that you understand what a hard bounce is, you can see why avoiding one is so important, and that Verfalia’s email validation technology can help.
Sign up for Verifalia now to start filtering invalid email addresses and avoid a hard bounce.