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Tag: bounce rate

  • Google Is About to Delete Inactive Accounts. Here’s How to Avoid A Massive Gmail Bounce Rate. | Entrepreneur

    Google Is About to Delete Inactive Accounts. Here’s How to Avoid A Massive Gmail Bounce Rate. | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    “If a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least two years, we may delete the account and its contents,” Google announced in a blog post, and that time is coming soon. In December, the tech giant will begin removing inactive accounts along with their content across Google Workspace, which includes Gmail. The policy applies only to personal Google accounts — but for businesses like yours, that may result in a spike in bounces.

    Why Google will start purging abandoned accounts

    Google’s decision to weed out inactive accounts is another step the company is taking to prevent security threats like spam, phishing and account hijacking.

    “If an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised,” Google’s VP of Product Management Ruth Kricheli explains. Abandoned accounts have weaknesses bad actors could exploit. Old passwords and a lack of two-factor authentication make them vulnerable and “a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam,” adds Kricheli.

    How to prepare and avoid a massive Gmail bounce rate

    For businesses like yours that use email to connect with customers and prospects, Google’s move is a high bounce rate alert. With Gmail being the largest email provider in the world, your email list likely contains many personal Gmail accounts, especially if your business caters to consumers.

    Email providers consider a bounce rate under 2% acceptable. But once you’ve crossed that threshold, your emails can start landing in the spam folder. Bounces tarnish your sender reputation, which is a 0 to 100 score Internet service providers (ISPs) use to determine whether you’re a legitimate sender or a spammer. The closer to 100 your score is, the more ISPs trust you as a sender – and deliver your messages to the inbox. Lower scores mean your emails could be spam.

    So, how can you prepare beforehand and avoid emailing addresses that may bounce? Being proactive is much easier than fixing the damage.

    Related: 5 Simple Tweaks for Better Email Deliverability

    Remove inactive subscribers

    Many businesses hold on to subscribers longer than they should. Having a sizable email list can give you a wider reach. However, in email marketing, engagement trumps such vanity metrics. Also, if someone hasn’t opened your emails in more than six months, what are the chances they’ll ever start engaging again?

    So, segment unengaged subscribers and try to win them back with an enticing offer. Make sure you put it right in the subject line and preview text so they can’t miss it. Then, remove non-openers and keep only prospects who click. Before Google starts deleting them, it’s best to prune these accounts yourself to avoid any bounces.

    Validate your entire email list

    Observing how your inactive subscribers react to a targeted campaign gives you useful audience insights. But inactive subscribers aren’t the only risky types of contacts you could have on your list. Abuse emails, for instance, belong to individuals who tend to report many emails as spam. To avoid potential spam complaints, some email marketers prefer to weed them out using an email verifier.

    There’s also the issue of temporary email addresses, which many people use to avoid giving out their real address. Temporary emails self-destruct and cause your emails to bounce, so deleting them from your database is good prevention.

    On average, almost a quarter of your database goes bad yearly, according to ZeroBounce’s Email List Decay Report. The upcoming Gmail purge will only add to this natural data decay, so validate your list again to ensure it’s safe to use.

    How Google will delete inactive accounts

    While Google’s policy took effect in May 2023, it won’t affect inactive Gmail users until December. The tech company will delete abandoned accounts in several phases, starting with those people created and never used again. Could you have any such email addresses in your database? Check your email marketing reports. If any subscribers signed up for your emails but never opened your messages, remove them immediately.

    Related: How to give your email marketing a boost ahead of the holidays

    Abandoned accounts are hurting your email marketing

    As a business owner trying to reach your customers’ inboxes, you must always be aware of your sender reputation. Bounces and spam complaints affect it dramatically, but so does poor engagement.

    When people don’t react to the emails you send, ISPs interpret that as an indication that your content isn’t helpful. As a result, your emails are more likely to go to the junk folder. That’s why email marketing best practices involve regularly pruning unresponsive subscribers. Their mere presence on your email list hurts your email deliverability. And when they’ll start bouncing, the damage will be even more severe.

    So, reevaluate the health of your email list so that your newsletters and campaigns can make it to the inbox. The Gmail purge is the best reason to look into the quality of your contacts today.

    Liviu Tanase

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  • 5 Simple Tweaks for Better Email Deliverability | Entrepreneur

    5 Simple Tweaks for Better Email Deliverability | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    More than 4.6 billion people will be using email by 2025. For businesses like yours, email remains a critical communication channel. Not only is it most reliable for transactional messages, but it also allows you to boost revenue through newsletters and marketing campaigns.

    So many pieces make up the puzzle of effective email marketing. Compelling copy and beautiful design help you stand out. But first, you have to make sure your emails are going to the inbox. Email deliverability isn’t guaranteed — your campaigns can easily go to spam.

    Related: 8 Simple Email Marketing Tips to Improve Your Open and Click-Through Rates

    To boost email deliverability, improve your sender reputation

    So, why do certain emails land in the inbox while others go to spam? It boils down to your sender reputation, a score that allows Internet service providers (ISPs) to determine whether you’re a legitimate sender. From the types of emails you send to the engagement they get, your entire behavior as a sender influences your score.

    Here are five simple tweaks to consider for your email marketing strategy to give your score — and inbox reach — a quick boost.

    1. Prune your email database

    Outdated and unengaged contacts hurt your email deliverability. When you email fake or non-existent addresses, you’re very much acting like a spammer, so don’t be surprised if your emails land in spam.

    A good rule of thumb is to pay close attention to your metrics, especially your bounce rate. When more than 2% of your emails bounce back, it’s a sign that your database needs pruning. Another good practice is to run your contacts through an email verifier every quarter. Keep in mind that about 23% of the average email list deteriorates yearly. Email decay is natural, but it isn’t something you can ignore if you want your emails to arrive in the inbox.

    Related: 3 Simple Things You Can Do to Build A Healthy, Thriving Email List

    2. Segment your audience

    As your engagement plays such an important role in your sender score, increasing your metrics is essential to your email deliverability. Email list segmentation will help you do just that, allowing you to target subscribers with campaigns that matter to them.

    Many business owners are intimidated by list segmentation. It entails going through your system and splitting your customers and prospects into specific groups. Using filters such as location, gender, interests or past purchases, segmentation allows you to see where each person is in their buyer’s journey – and send them content that pushes them forward.

    Although email list segmentation can take a lot of work to set up, it pays off. On average, open rates are 14.31% higher for segmented, personalized campaigns. This key metric, along with better click rates, fosters healthy email deliverability.

    3. Ask questions

    Marketers ask questions in their emails because they want to strengthen their relationship with their audience. But asking questions and getting people to reply to your messages also helps your email deliverability. Inbox providers see it as a sign of trust. If someone writes you back, they’re encouraging further communication. Hence, your emails should be in that person’s inbox — and in other inboxes — in the future.

    So, in your next email, how can you spark conversations with your subscribers? The best questions come from genuine curiosity, so think about a topic both you and your audience care about. Ask a question and don’t forget to tell people to hit reply and answer it.

    4. Get on a schedule

    Having a set email-sending schedule is another simple change you can make that has multiple benefits. First, being present in your prospects’ inboxes builds awareness and familiarity for your brand. When they need your product, those prospects will be more likely to buy it from you, simply because they’ve been hearing from you regularly.

    On top of that, sending emails on a schedule helps your reputation. Unlike spammers, who send emails erratically, you have ongoing communication with your audience. While your marketing approach can be surprising in order to stand out, your schedule should be predictable.

    Establishing a sending schedule doesn’t have to entail writing more emails. However, if you send a weekly or monthly newsletter, try to send it on the same day and even at the same time. You’ll be helping both your engagement and email deliverability.

    Related: 4 Ways to Stop Your Emails From Going to Spam

    5. Scan every email for potential spam triggers

    A spammy word in your subject line, too many images and too little text, link shorteners or broken links can result in your email landing in your recipient’s spam folder. So, before you hit send, scan your email to make sure it doesn’t look like spam. Ask your team to take a look, too.

    You can go a step further and test your email deliverability with the help of an inbox tester. Reliable inbox testers pinpoint potential deliverability issues so you can fix them before it’s too late. It takes only minutes to test your email and get access to these insights. Sometimes, a simple tweak will pull your campaign out of spam and ensure it lands in the inbox.

    Liviu Tanase

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