Mindmatrix policy on hard bounced or unsubscribed contacts
Before you add contacts to your account in Mindmatrix, please read this document.
As a best practice, you should double-opt-in any contacts added to your account in Mindmatrix.
If you have proof of double-opt-ins, you can also submit this proof to any third party service that may blacklist the emails you send.
What are hard bounced contacts?
Hard bounced contacts are invalid email addresses that any email provider is unable to send to - for example, email addresses that are:
- Retired
- Do not exist
We know a contact is hard bounced when it is returned back to the sender by the recipient server. Too many hard bounced contacts can hurt your sender score.
How can I avoid adding email addresses that will hard bounce or unsubscribe from my emails?
Keeping a clean and up-to-date list of contacts is an ongoing, but necessary, task for your marketing efforts. To maintain an accurate contact list, follow these recommendations before importing your contact lists into Mindmatrix:
- Find leads from referrals, events and other relationship-focused sources. Purchased lists of cold leads typically have a high bounce rate.
- Directly ask your contacts to opt in to receiving marketing emails from you. You can also set up double-opt in and subscription landing pages within Mindmatrix.
- Confirm the validity of your list’s email addresses using an email verification service.
- Consider removing or verifying email addresses older than 6 months.
What are unsubscribed contacts?
These are contacts who have requested to no longer be emailed from your account in Mindmatrix.
Given all of this, why is it important that you do not delete contacts?
What happens if I delete hard bounces and unsubscribes?
Deleted hard bounces and unsubscribes are removed from your account but stored in a table so that they cannot be sent to again. If any contact that was removed needs to be permanently deleted, you should email privacy@mindmatrix.net.
What is a Sender Score?
A sender score is a measurement of how trusted any email service is to send emails. To get the best results out of any marketing campaign, it's best to have the highest sender score possible. You can help maintain the Sender Score by only sending emails to opted-in contacts and cleaning hard bounces from your list before adding them to Mindmatrix.
How can I tell a record is hard bounced?
The best way is to verify it personally with the owner of the email address. You can do this by opting in contacts in-person, by form, or by phone call.
What happens if users routinely damage the Sender Score by sending emails to hard bounced or unsubscribed contacts?
It hurts every user who uses the IP. Clients in MSP Advantage and IT Advantage are on a shared IP, and as such, are responsible for only adding in opted-in, good emails to their account. Failure to do harms every other sender.
What is a "shared IP"?
MSP Advantage and IT Advantage clients are on a shared IP. This means that they all must follow best practices and send to opted-in contacts--or else they hurt everyone.
If your emails are reported as SPAM this will hurt your open rate, as well as other Advantage members. In good faith, as a member of the Advantage community, only add opted-in contacts. This helps everyone market better and more effectively.
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