How can I stop emailing hard bounces?

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I want to stop emailing hard bounces. Our CRM system (Sage SalesLogix) doesn't allow us to delete leads, whether in SLx or Marketo.

I've been including the condition "if email not bounced > is any" in my smart lists for a while now but I'm still getting a tonne of hard bounces.

How can I stop emailing these leads without deleting them?

Also - any best practices for what to do with soft bounces?

Thanks so much!

[Josh_Hill13 · Accepted solution]

Hannah,

Please see my slides here:http://www.slideshare.net/jdavidhill/marketo-email-reputation-management

And do a search for hard bounces or deliverability here on the Community. Autumn Tyr Salvia has several threads.

What you should do is establish a Master Suppression list that combines several smart lists like Competitors, Email Invalid=True, Marketing Suspend=True, and Bounces.

I think a better restriction for your smart list is to say

1. Include the people you want.
2. exclude anyone who bounced in past 30 days or has email=invalid

[Anonymous]

Also, for soft bounces I would consider setting some thresholds in place to avoid killing your IP's spam score.

For us, 3 soft bounces within 90 days (use the "Email Soft Bounced: Is Any: Within 90 day" and add constraint "Min Num of times: 3") moves a lead to a "delicate" list. This this only recieves emails that are very personalized and score very low on spam scoring methods; in addition to this, the lead gets emails much less frequently.

If the lead then interacts with our brand for a decent bit, we will usually move them back over to regular nurture lists.