Study and Reduce Hard and Soft Bounces

Hard bounces

These are the ones no campaign creator likes to face.

A hard bounce means that your recipient’s email address does not exist, or that they have blocked all your outgoing emails.

In short, you will no longer be able to reach them. Their email contact is therefore obsolete. This is a permanent problem that you cannot resolve.

Soft bounces

Soft bounces imply a temporary distribution problem. There are many reasons that can lead to this situation:

• Your recipient’s inbox is full
• The custom email domain name does not exist
• Your email is too large
• Their email server is down
• They received too many emails in a short period
• Their inbox is inactive or misconfigured
• Your email is likely to contain viruses
• The inbox is not configured correctly or is inactive
• The recipient’s email server is down or disconnected.
• The recipient’s email server received too many emails during a certain period.
• Your email is too large.
• Your email’s authentication does not meet the requirements of the server you are trying to reach

Generally, the error message received in return indicates the precise reason for the sending failure.

In email sequences, LaGrowthMachine allows you to analyze your conversions and get more details in the “logs” section:

Furthermore, you can see your leads’ responses directly in the tool:

In any case, whether it’s a soft bounce or a hard bounce, it is crucial to study your email bounces. Let’s see why.

Authenticate your domain name

There are several email authentication protocols, the best known being DMARC. It can be governed by SPF (Sender Policy Framework) or DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) standards.

These help combat identity theft and fraudulent techniques like scams or phishing.

Using an authenticated domain name allows email servers to correctly route sent emails and consequently boost deliverability.

In LaGrowthMachine, you can configure this part and greatly improve your deliverability:

Avoid free domain names

Email servers tend to quickly classify mass mailings from email addresses ending in “@gmail.com”, “@outlook.fr”, “@yahoo.fr” as potential spam. Or at least consider the sender suspicious.

Choose a professional email address, ending with the same domain name as your company.

Regularly clean your database

This is the foundation of any sales prospecting technique. Generally, CRMs (Hubspot, Sendinblue, Mailchimp, PipeDrive…) automatically handle the deletion of hard bounces from your sending lists.

If not, make sure to do it manually before each campaign. An unusable email address is detrimental to your business. Address the problem from the start, and regularly.

Take this opportunity to identify email addresses that seem completely aberrant and delete them.

Similarly, if an email address systematically bounces back as a soft bounce, clean it without delay.

Refine your content, favor inbound

At LaGrowthMachine, we are big fans of inbound marketing… even if our essence is outreach!

For us, the secret to good sales prospecting revolves around content workflows pushed at each stage of your conversion funnel.

The more valuable your content, the higher the chances of maximizing the opening of sent emails.

Consult our dedicated article and familiarize yourself with the method for writing a good B2B prospecting email.

Moreover, our team assists you in your copywriting efforts to optimize your conversion rate.

Logically, the probability of your email being directly discarded is significantly reduced.

Under these conditions, it’s difficult for an email server to classify you as a spam sender.

Segment your data list

This point overlaps with the previous one. The more segmented your contact lists are, the more you can personalize your prospecting emails.

And the more personalized they are, the greater your chances of having your emails opened and responded to.

LaGrowthMachine also allows you to manage your automated leads directly from the tool:

If you wish, you can also synchronize your CRM with LaGrowthMachine and be alerted directly from your CRM interface when a new lead enters the pipeline, following your automated campaign.

Use double opt-in

Imagine someone on the street approaching you about an inappropriate topic, without having asked for anything. It’s quite unbearable. You’ll simply want them to leave you alone.

It’s the same for your inbox. The only difference is that it’s even easier to move an annoying email to the trash. Or even worse, to mark it as spam.

This is why it is essential to ensure your recipients’ consent before sending them anything. This will prevent a massive unsubscribe rate or spam reports that would significantly harm your reputation.

This technique is called opt-in. Generally, it’s a simple checkbox informing your prospect that they will receive your promotional content (or not) if they agree.

Even better, double opt-in ensures the validity of an email address. They will receive a confirmation email on which they must click to validate their subscription to the service. This way, you avoid populating your database with “junk” or non-existent email addresses.

Analyze your statistics frequently

Analysis is crucial for any growth marketing action. The sooner you identify the source of the problem, the faster you can fix it.

Keep a constant eye on:

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Unsubscribe rate
• Bounce rate

If you see an indicator in the red, take immediate concrete actions to avoid damaging your reputation and deliverability.

Here again, LaGrowthMachine has a reporting & data analytics feature that allows you to track your conversions and provides insights to improve your campaigns:

       

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