Bounce management: Tips for high quality recipient lists

Doo can only be used to send e-mail messages if the selected recipient list has an appropriate quality, in particular to prevent bounces (undeliverable e-mails) that could endanger the operation of our platform. 

Requirements for recipient lists of e-mail messages

The quality of a recipient list at doo is measured by the proportion of active e-mail addresses in relation to inactive addresses: Active addresses are those recipients who have been successfully contacted in the last 60 days via a doo e-mail message (booking related e-mails are not counted here). Accordingly, those recipients are inactive who have not been contacted via a doo e-mail message for some time or who have not been contacted at all.

Contacts are blocked if they were reported as hard bounce or complaint in a previous message or if they logged out. These contacts will be skipped in future e-mail messages, i.e. no more e-mail messages will be sent to them.

The number of inactive contacts should not exceed 20% of the total recipients. If the proportion of inactive contacts exceeds this percentage, the email can only be sent to a limited number of recipients. This limit applies, for example, if your recipient list is a new list imported into doo, i.e. only inactive contacts.

The maximum number of inactive attendees that can be addressed with doo is 100 contacts by default. If you can prove the quality of your contacts by successfully sending them to small distribution lists, this number can be increased step by step. If the permitted bounce and complaint rates of these campaigns are not exceeded, we will be happy to examine the possibility of an increased shipping volume and gradually increase the limit for you. Here you will find a step-by-step guide.

Whether you can send your message or not can be seen in the box "recipients" in your message draft. If you have scheduled an e-mail message for a later time and in the meantime make changes to the selected contact group so that the requirements for the recipient list are no longer met at the time of sending, sending is blocked. In this case, you will receive an e-mail notification and your scheduled message will be returned to your drafts.

What to do if the sending of a message is blocked ?

If your message sending has been blocked because the inactive addresses at the time of sending made up more than 20% of the total recipients or the number of inactive contacts set for your account exceeded the maximum number, please proceed as follows:

1. Call up the draft of the e-mail message via the overview in doo and select "Recipient".

2. Check how many inactive contacts your recipient list contains and by how many this number exceeds the maximum number of inactive recipients stored for your account (if it has not yet been adjusted for your account in doo, the maximum number is 100 by default). If in doubt, you can also ask our customer service about your current limit.

3. Divide your original contact group into smaller contact groups where the number of contacts does not exceed the maximum number of inactive recipients allowed in your account. To do this, go to your contact center and filter the contacts according to the desired contact group and select the number of contacts you can write to by clicking the checkbox. Depending on the desired group size, you can, for example, select 50 contacts per page and mark all contacts on pages 1 and 2 to select a total of 100 contacts. Then add the contacts to a new group by clicking on the "Add to group" option.

4. You can then start sending your message to the new contact group. After you have sent the e-mail message and the bounce rate is still below 5% in the performance report two hours after sending, you can either continue with further small contact groups or contact doo customer service and request an increase in your shipping limit. More information can be found here.

If you need support in preparing and sending your e-mail messages, e.g. because you want to send a campaign to a very large distribution list, doo can also provide you with a project manager on an hourly basis as part of a moderated dispatch. If you are interested, please contact your doo contact person or our customer support for an appropriate offer.

What to do when the bounce rate of my e-mail massage is too high ?

In order not to endanger the operation of our platform, the bounce or complaint rates of doo e-mail campaigns must not exceed 5% or 0.5% according to the doo e-mail policy.  Bounce is the term used for undeliverable e-mails. Complaints, on the other hand, mean that the recipient has actively reported the e-mail to his e-mail provider as not trustworthy. Detailed information on bounces and complaints can be found here. 

The purpose of the limitation described above is to avoid exceeding the guideline values when sending e-mail messages via doo right from the start. If one of the values is still exceeded, the sender of the message receives an automatic notification by e-mail.

In this case, please make sure that you only import and write to current contacts in doo the next time they are sent, for whom you know that the e-mail addresses still exist and for whom you have a consent for the e-mail contact.

 As described in our e-mail policy, doo reserves the right to take action if a user's email messages regularly show excessive bounce and complaint rates. This can range from reducing the total number of inactive recipients to deactivating the email manager for the corresponding doo account.

Further information, why a "clean" contact list is not only important for the further use of the doo e-mail manager, but also in your own interest, can be found in our blog (currently only available in german)