You have sent out an email campaign, now what?
It’s important to try to keep your email list clean and consisting of only quality contacts. Unopened and bounced emails are ones that weren’t received for a particular reason. To keep these emails from interfering with your reporting stats, it is important to fix or remove these addresses from your list. This will allow you to focus on engaging with your most potential customers.
Review your contacts
Bounces are automated messages from the receiving mail server that inform the sender about a delivery problem.
To find out which emails bounced, go into your Constant Contact account and select a particular email campaign.
- Click on the Open Rate percentage number and then click on the Bounced category under the My Reports
- OR simply click on the number listed for Bounces in the Email Stats
Bounces are divided into different categories under the Reason column
- Undeliverable – the receiving email server temporary can’t be found so can’t be delivered
- Non-existent – the email address is incorrect or can’t be found
- Suspended – the email has been consistently bounced as non-existent and placed in an internal hold status as a result
- Mailbox full – too full to continue receiving email
- Vacation/ Auto Reply – your email just may not be opened for a while
- Other – the ISP didn’t use a standard message and we don’t know how to categorize it
What to do
- Quickly scan the bounced email list for typo’s that can easily be fixed.
Example: vimm.coom should be vimm.com. To make a change, click the pencil icon to the right of the email address and easily fix it there. - Look for all Non-existent and Suspended emails and remove them from your list. This will add them to your unsubscribed list. The contacts will still be able to rejoin your list if they subscribe again.
- Watch the Undeliverable emails. If they continue to appear on a number of email campaigns, then it is time to remove them as well.
Create a Did Not Open List
Did Not Open emails are not the same as Bounced emails. Creating a list of contacts that did not open your email is an important step to re-engaging them with your business.
Designing a specific targeted email or message just for these contacts may be a great way to help these contacts come back and become more engaged again. Remember to always use a captivating subject line to get your contact to want to open your email.
How to Do It
- Click on your email campaign
- Click on the Open Rate number and then click on the Did Not Open category under the My Reports OR simply click on the number listed for Did Not Open in the Email Stats (as shown in the image above)
- Select all the email addresses that appear in the list and click Manage List – here you can create a new list or add to a specific list you already have set up.
At Vivid Image we are proud to partner with Constant Contact and are ready to help you find the right fit for your Email Marketing strategy. From Newsletters and Publications to Surveys and Social Campaigns we are here to help you get started, achieve better results and find the perfect fit. Contact your Account Director or (320) 587-8974 with your Email Marketing or Constant Contact questions or visit Constant Contact for a FREE Trial.
