Bounces and feedback
Deliverability depends on clean lists
Email that bounces is not worth much. So there are mechanisms to help you deal with it.
Handling bounces
Keeping lists clean matters more than it sounds. Send repeatedly to addresses that no longer work - because the recipient changed job or provider - and you will find yourself blocked.
So every recipient carries an email status telling you whether they bounce. You can clean up by hand, segmenting on hard and soft bounces, or set up an automation flow that removes them for you.
We distinguish soft from hard bounces, meaning temporary from permanent failures, and follow the standards for it. Alongside that we maintain rules for the providers who do not follow them. There are a fair few, which is why this work matters.
Feedback loops
One of the most important defences against a poor reputation with the large providers is a feedback loop. The moment a recipient marks a newsletter as spam, the provider tells us.
That lets you remove the recipient so they get no more newsletters. As with bounces, you can do it by hand by segmenting on spam complaints, or let a flow do it.
It saves you the reputation damage of sending to the same person again later. Keeping a good relationship with Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail in particular depends on it.
Shall we look at your deliverability?
We are glad to review how your lists and sending are doing.