The CCK email marking feature is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal when it comes to audience engagement, follow-up and keeping your users close to your brand.
However, you need to manage your email marketing score and you have to have good sending practices. Having good or bad emailing practices can make or break your marketing campaign. See below for some important information about the emailing feature with some dos and dont's.
Bounces
Hard bounce
A Hard Bounce refers to the permanent failure in the delivery of the email address. There are a few common reasons which can cause this to occur:
Invalid recipients address -the domain of the email is not real/does not exist -the email server of the client is not accepting incoming emails
Soft bounced too many times
Your message contains a link which is known to have been reported for malicious activity, bad phrases or images.
Soft Bounce
Soft Bounce is a type of bounce which indicates a temporary failure to deliver an email.
These types of bounces are treated differently than the permanent Hard ones, and delivery will be re-attempted. There is a multitude of reasons for a soft bounce to occur, so it is worth mentioning the most common ones.
The recipient’s inbox is already full
The email is too large -the email server is down
Rejected by the User’s incoming filter
After multiple unsuccessful attempts at re-delivery, the email will hard bounce and permanent failure to deliver will occur.
How they affect your score
Hard bounces do negatively impact your emailing ranking score with the ESP. If your bounce rate goes above 5%, we will have no choice but to temporarily disable your emailing capabilities until we conduct a review of your emailing practices.
Spam
Spam complaints are something you will most likely receive during your email campaigns and automation, and should not be disregarded. They are harmful to your overall sender reputation, can hinder your deliverability and eventually disable your emailing service if the complaints get to a high rate.
Spam complaints refer to the report sent out once an email sent from your campaign is reported as spam by the recipient.
Spam rate
The global standard for the maximum allowed spam rate is 0.1% or 1 of each 1000 emails that you send.
How is this affecting you as a sender?
Once an email you’ve sent is marked as spam, there is a multitude of negative consequences which occur. Your email could be blacklisted, which can result in failure to land anywhere else but the spam folder of your intended recipients.
It can lead to blocking your emailing service as a whole and even damage our ability to provide the email service to all of our users.
Spam Traps
What they are
Spam traps are email addresses used to check your emailing activity hygiene. The purpose of this is to identify users who send emails to old email addresses or addresses they shouldn’t be sending to since they don’t have permission.
These emails are created in such a manner that they cannot be subscribed to your list or double-opted. Therefore, sending an email to this address signifies your bad emailing habits and therefore can result in email service suspension.
How to avoid them
Good emailing list hygiene – means – cleaning your lists regularly, using double opt-in, do not purchase email lists online, and always making sure your clients are expecting your emails.
Permission
What is permission
Permission refers to the act of your subscribers agreeing to receive email marketing emails from you. The importance of this permission is for your subscribers to not end up reporting your emails as spam since they did not expect to receive an email from you.
It is unfortunate, however, that some users report emails as Spam when they want to unsubscribe and do not actually want to report it as being spammy. Make sure to give them the option to unsubscribe as well.
How to obtain it
Double opt-in forms are a great way to make sure that all subscribers on your list have agreed to be included in your email marketing campaign and that their emails are active at the time of the subscription.
Once a client submits a form, they will be sent an email with a link – if the connection is confirmed, this means you have their agreement to send them emails. Due to the verification of the email with the double-opt-in, you can be sure the emails won’t bounce due to typos and the spam report rate will be significantly lower.
Email sending limitations
Why do we limit and review email accounts?
To maintain great deliverability for your emails, we review and score accounts based on their sending history. We have a few reasons for putting your account in review mode:
1. Email sending allowance
To create a score for new users, we need to collect some sending data. All new senders start with a limit email sending allowance of 1,000 emails sent. This gives us enough data and time to see the bounce and spam rates for that account. After we generate a score, we will extend your email-sending allowance.
This process usually takes no more than 2 hours and it is automatic. A review of your account will start at about 80% of the allowance limit. The allowance limits are 1,000 / 5,000 / 10,000 / 25,000 / Unlimited.
2. Bad Reputation
If your score is low, the platform will automatically add your account on pause and pending approval or decline from an admin. A bad reputation is generated due to bad bounce or spam rates. Our accepted rates are a 5% bounce rate and a 0.1% spam rate. If either of these is above, your account will be paused for review.
3. Issues with links
If your links are leading to content that is not compliant with our terms and conditions, we will put your account under review by an admin. Other reasons are if you use link shorteners, multiple redirects, etc.
What to do if you have been limited
If you are limited due to sending allowance, then there is nothing for you to do. The review is automatic and your emailing service will be reinstated in about 2 hours at most.
In case your remaining capabilities have been limited due to poor reputation - please reach out to us and have the answers to the following questions ready:
How do you collect leads and contacts?
Do you get explicit consent from your contacts so that you can contact them later and how?
What kind of emails do you send?
How often do you send emails?
What measures are currently implemented to avoid sending emails to people who do not wish to be emailed or have supplied the wrong email addresses?