Email Deliverability

[Muhammed_Suhail]

Hi,

We have Emailable flag from data ware house which filter out any unsubscribed, email invalid true flag.

Our Marketing team wants to target spam or soft bounced record without any limit to deliver email in upcoming campaigns as spam bounce records become emailable after 24 hours and there is no limit in sending email to soft bounced records.

My question:

Does it require to have an email deliverability campaign to flag any bounced record or soft bounced with a minimum of 3 attempt and not delivered email 3 times with the given duration as Marketing Suspended as TRUE and remove them from any marketing emails?

What could harm us if we keep try to send emails to spam and soft bounced records?

We have 95.4% Delivered rate, 21% open rate , 1.4% clicked link in email rate.

[Christiane_Rode]

What is the purpose behind sending an email to addresses with known issues?

The soft bounces, I could see potentially wanting to try to target them again as it might be a temporary issue (probably not if they continue to soft bounce), but for users that have marked you as spam, I don't see why you would continue to email them. They've expressed that the messages you are sending are unwanted. 

If you're on a dedicated IP, and you get flagged as a spammer, you could be suspended from sending any kind of email. If you're on a shared IP, you can affect everyone who shares your IP. Even if you're not suspended, if your sender reputation goes down, so does your ability to reach the inbox. 

[Muhammed_Suhail]

@Christiane_Rode Thank you for your response. I was trying to get a valid reason to advise them to flag as Marketing Suspended anyone who bounced as spam & not delivered email or bounced soft minimum 3 times & not delivered email in past 60 days.

Can you please elaborate your comment?

 "you're on a dedicated IP, and you get flagged as a spammer, you could be suspended from sending any kind of email."

1. Though every bounced spam record becomes emailable each time after 24 hours and gets removed from the Email      Suspended flag, we still get impacted if we try to send email to them in upcoming campaigns?

2. When you say 'suspended from sending any kind of email', do you mean we will be blocked from sending any email (marketing & transactional) to any email addresses from that specific domain?

3. Does Marketo have any limit on making emailable of every bounced spam email address after 24 hours?

4. Is asking recipients, whose domain keeps getting spammed, to whitelist our IP address or Return Path Header the best  solution to resolve the spam bounce issue?

5. Will there be any sort of impact to keep trying to send email to people who are soft bounced in multiple attempts?

6. What could be best practice to use from following as Bounced smart filter will include anyone who have bounced              interaction in the past 25 months even they become marketable later? 

                  Bounced - category 2 or Email Suspended is True ;   Flow - Marketing Suspended is TRUE.

Many Thanks!

[Christiane_Rode · Accepted solution]

@Muhammed_Suhail, the first step will always be to ensure that you adhere to the spam laws in your area, and the second will be to be sure that you're adhering to the Adobe TOS. 

The long and the short of it is, you absolutely can still be affected if you send to an email address that has known issues -- either that it bounced, or they marked you as spam. Just because Marketo has removed the email suspension doesn't mean that you should continue to email them. 

The email suspension I was speaking of applies to your IP (which is why if you're sharing an IP address with other users, you're affected by their behavior as well -- good or bad). But your domain can be blocked, too. 

If a recipient has marked you as spam, I would take that as a clear indicator that they don't want to hear from you. But, there are cases where, if you know that they want to be getting your email, you can work with someone's IT department to get your IP safelisted. But, again, you should be sure that these are people that want to be hearing from you. 

Look at the bounce codes that get applied when the emails bounce -- are they structural failures? Are emails bouncing once or twice, or are they bouncing 20 or 30 times? Do the bounce reasons indicate that a user has blocked you or your email was blocked because it's coming from a known spam source? All these things should be taken into consideration when trying to figure out your next steps.

What it boils down to is that you really need a strong business case before deciding to email addresses with known issues, as, even with the best of intentions, your ability to send emails and have them land in someone's inbox can be affected by these decisions.  Just because you CAN email someone doesn't mean you SHOULD. 

[Muhammed_Suhail]

@Christiane_Rode Thank you for the response and resolving the case.

[Muhammed_Suhail]

Hi @Christiane_Rode 

Thanks for your input.

We're planning to build campaign to flag Marketing Suspended for Bounced records for both spam and soft bounces.  

Since Marketo marks all spam bounces under Email Suspended Flag, can't we use this field to exclude any spam records from our target audience?   

Will those who have ever received an email after it bounces as Spam be taken off of Email Suspended flag?

[Muhammed_Suhail]

@Christiane_Rode I'd like to see your input on below point

[Christiane_Rode]

The email suspension is temporary.  So, while you technically can email these people, I still am not understanding why you would want to do so, as they've indicated that they don't want to hear from you.  

If you wanted to use the suspension flag to then Marketing Suspend them to prevent teams from emailing them at all, you could definitely set up a smart campaign to do so.