Email Messages Bounce. It’s not fun but it is a fact of email marketing life. It affects anyone who sends email whether for personal reasons or business. Let’s look at some ways to better understand why this happens and what can actually be done about it.

You build your list. You create your messages. You send your broadcasts, and  — when you check your reports — you see that some of your messages “bounced.”

Which means your email never actually got to your intended recipient. If you use one of those email marketing services that charges you based on your list size, you are wasting money, missing out on sales, and messing up your deliverability.

Fortunately, TrafficWave charges one flat monthly rate AND manages all email bounces for you. But let’s take a look at some of the reasons email messages bounce:

The Email Address Does Not Actually Exist This could be the result of a typing error or someone just entering a bogus email address to get information without actually getting added to your list. The first issue is just human error and it  happens to us all. Entering a bogus email address is fairly common for folks that just want to get free info, a download, etc.. without actually giving you their email address. Fortunately, our double opt-in system prevents this from being a possibility with TrafficWave. Only true, valid, and confirmed email addresses make it to your list with our system.

The Email Address Is Undeliverable If bounced emails are found to be in the “Undeliverable” category, this just means the receiving email server is temporarily unavailable, was overloaded, or could not be found.

A server that canot be found could have crashed or been under maintenance, so this may just be temporary. However, if this email address repeatedly bounces on multiple emails, it may mean the server is gone for good.

The Mailbox May Be Full If your contact has so many emails in their inbox they just cannot receive any more, this would just mean your email messages bounce until there’s space for them.

This may mean the subscriber is away for a while. Sometimes, this can mean that the contact is no longer using that email address.

The Email Address May Be On Vacation or Auto-Reply If someone goes on vacation or can’t check their email, your emails to them will bounce.

It’s important to note that, unlike with other bounce categories, this type of bounce means your email was actually delivered to the inbox.

Carefully monitor how often this email address ends up in this category. If months go by and the person hasn’t returned from vacation, you are mailing a pointless contact.

Your Message May Be Getting Blocked Sometimes, new hosting accounts, new email address, or educational and government entities can be very aggressive or restrictive in allowing emails through. If you are seeing messages to your own email address getting blocked when you should be receiving them, a call to your web hosting provider may help resolve the issue.

The good news for you is that when email messages bounce with your TrafficWave account, they are monitored closely. A temporary bouncy will typically just allow business to go on as normal If, however, the bounce is due to some of the other reasons or the email address has just been deleted, the address will be removed from your campaign automatically.

This helps keep your deliverability higher and makes sure your efforts are spent on reaching valid interested parties.

Feel free to comment or ask any questions. We love to hear from our readers.

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