Understanding "Gone No Address"

Protecting Your Organisation's Reputation

When sending out marketing or service emails, either to internal teams or external customers, it's common to encounter bounces. Understanding the types of bounces and their implications is crucial for maintaining a good sender reputation and ensuring the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

"Gone No Address" (GNA) refers to contacts who have been marked as such due to hard bounces. When a contact is marked as GNA, they are excluded from future mailouts.

Why Hard Bounces Occur

Several reasons contribute to hard bounces, including:

• Incorrect Email Addresses: Typos or incorrect data entry, such as "Abc@gmial.com" or "abc@hotnail.com," can lead to hard bounces.

• Non-Existent Users or Domains: If a user has left an organisation and their account is deleted, or if a domain is not registered, emails will hard bounce.

• Organisation or User Blocking: Some organisations block certain domains to prevent spam, though this is less common.

  
  

The Impact of Ignoring Hard Bounces

Ignoring hard bounces can have significant consequences:

• Wasted Budget: Spending on emails that won't be delivered is a waste of resources.

• Reduced Campaign Effectiveness: High hard bounce rates can reduce the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns by decreasing the number of successfully delivered messages.

• Sender Reputation: Frequent hard bounces can damage your sender reputation, potentially leading to emails being classified as spam by providers.

  
  

Maintaining a Clean Send Rate

To minimise bounce rates and protect your reputation:

• Verify Email Addresses: Implement a verification process when users opt into mailing lists.

• Regularly Clean Your Email List: Quarterly checks can help identify and correct incorrect email addresses or domains.

• Analyse Mailout Reports: Identify contacts who haven't engaged with your emails over multiple campaigns.

• Monitor Hard Bounces: For internal communications, verify if hard bounces are genuine and take corrective action.

Addressing Contacts Marked as GNA

When a contact is marked as GNA due to a hard bounce, they are excluded from future mailouts. If you believe the email address is correct, you should investigate and potentially remove the address from the GNA list to ensure they receive future communications. In cases where you need to contact them about something critical and non-marketing related, and you have their mobile number, you could consider using an automated bounced email address SMS programme to reach out to them and collect their correct address.

Conclusion

Regularly monitoring your database contacts and hard bounce lists is essential for protecting your organisation's reputation and budget. By understanding and addressing the causes of hard bounces, you can improve your email campaign effectiveness and maintain a positive sender reputation.