Find out how you can prevent and remedy high cold email bounce rates including tips for verification during a mail merge in Google Sheets
Cold emailing can be intimidating, especially if you are worried about a high bounce rate. That’s why we’re here today to help you discover how you can minimize your bounce rate and adjust your campaign if needed. There are so many variables that affect your bounce rate including how you executed your mail merge for cold emails, your address list, unsubscribe button, and domain reputation. Before you begin trying different strategies at random, we are here to show you how you can use analytics to improve your bounce rate.
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What are the Different Bounce Rate Metrics and What Do They Mean?
After you perform your mail merge in Google Sheets and send out your first messages, it’s time to get into the analytics
Though a high bounce rate is not a good indicator for cold email, it can be easily remedied.
Right off the bat, it is important to understand that a high bounce is not a crisis situation when it comes to cold emails. When it comes to bounce rates, it is much more important for regular mass emails (as opposed to cold emails) to maintain a good domain reputation. Still, you want your emails to be properly delivered after you went to all the trouble of executing a mail merge in Google Sheets and drafting a message. To help you make sense of your cold email bounce rate, let’s take a look at the different bounce rate metrics you should be monitoring for each campaign.
- Soft Bounce – The soft bounce refers to a temporary delivery error. In the case of a soft bounce it could be due to a full inbox or an error with the message or server. The important thing to note here is that the email address you messages is valid. When you encounter a soft bounce, we recommend attempting contact a second time.
- Hard Bounce – Unlike a soft bounce, a hard bounce means that the email address from your mail merge in Google Sheets is invalid. When you receive a hard bounce it can mean that the email address was misspelled, does not exist, or the person has left the company attached to their address. If you receive a hard bounce for an address, you should delete the address from your list.
- Reject Bounce – This type of bounce means that the recipient has a service installed that automatically rejects certain types of emails. This could mean that they are blocking emails from outside the organization or sales emails in general. Regardless of the reason, your message was automatically flagged.
How Can I Prevent My Emails From Bouncing?
Find out how you can prevent bouncing from executing your mail merge in Google Sheets to analyzing your metrics
Avoid the spam folder with our tips.
There are a few steps you can take in order to minimize your bounce rate and ensure that your cold emails are being delivered. We’re going over the 3 we found to have the greatest effect on bounce rates, but this is far from every single strategy. Let’s get started!
1. Verify Your Addresses
If your hard bounce rate is very high, it is beneficial to go back and verify your older addresses. Back when you performed the initial mail merge in Google Sheets, you assumed that your addresses were legitimate and current. However, this is not always the case depending on your chosen prospecting method. To ensure that your addresses are valid, you need to employ a third party service for verification. In some cases, mass cold email services have a built-in option to verify addresses during a mail merge in Google Sheets.
2. Include an Unsubscribe Link
Recently, there has been a greater effort to curb spam messages. As a part of this effort, it is now required to include an unsubscribe link in all unsolicited emails per the General Data Protection Regulation. However, it is still important to disguise your link because unsubscribes lead to a higher rejection bounce rate. So, while it is required to include an unsubscribe link, it isn’t necessary to make it front and center. If you devote too much room or have too straightforward of an unsubscribe button, you are also at risk of getting automatically flagged by the spam filter.
3. Double and Triple Check your Campaigns
Beyond validating your address and completing a mail merge in Google Sheets, it is important to do a few more checks before sending out your cold emails. Before you hit send and start your first campaign, ask yourself the following:
- Am I sending a reasonable amount of cold emails? Never send out more than 200 per day.
- Is my domain blacklisted? To check, there are servers that list blacklisted email domains.
- Have I tested my emails? Make sure you send a message to yourself to make sure these are no issues with content, configuration, or delivery.
Once you’ve answered these questions, you’re ready to start sending your cold emails.
After prospecting, completing a mail merge in Google Sheets, drafting messages, and creating a strategy, it is important to make sure that your hard work is being delivered. That’s why bounce rate is so important for cold emails. Though it isn’t as critical as with regular mass emails, you still want to make sure your campaign has as many eyes on it as possible. By following our tips, you’ll be well on your way to a successful sales campaign.
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