Email Failures

General General Questions
1

Each month I send out an email using a standalone mail software, to about 9200 customers. I will always get some bounced emails. 30 - 130 bounced that say some thing to the nature of:



This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.



A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: SOMEONE@SOMEWHERE.NET

SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:SOMEONE@SOMEWHERE.NET:

host mx.hughes.net [69.168.97.47]: 550 5.1.1 [R2] Recipient SOMEONE@SOMEWHERE.NET does not exist here.



I normally go through these one by one and see if the have made a purchase in the last 2 years. If they have, I leave them alone. If they have not, I delete the customer from cs-cart. I chose a 2 year cutoff do to the type of product we sell. Average repurchase 12- 18 months.





Two questions:

  1. Does my method seem reasonable? (I do have customers that have email addresses that bounce that continue to buy)
  2. I have noticed that when I delete the customer, it does not delete old orders. Should I develop a query that will remove orders if the associated customer id is not valid (ie deleted)?



    Thanks for any thought on this topic,



    David Dewitt

    jdneedleart.com
2

If it is a commercial address then the person probably took a new job somewhere else.

Generally a “permanent failure” means it will never get delivered to that address.

Your email software should handle this and it should prevent you from adding it to your email list again (referencing mailchimp as an example).



If you are exporting your complete database each time and your email software is not validating those addresses against previous mailings then my opinion is that you have a business process issue, not an email issue.



Not sure how much time you spend doing this, but an addon like our mailchimp addon (currently only for V2/V3) will manage all this for you in real-time and you don't have to worry about managing it yourself.



Again, investing $50-$100 in your business can save you hours of labor over the coming year. Not to mention the frustration.

3

[quote name='tbirnseth' timestamp='1389392292' post='174897']





Again, investing $50-$100 in your business can save you hours of labor over the coming year. Not to mention the frustration.

[/quote]



I can vouch for this, timesaver

4

Thanks for the input. I have been using a mailing software called “MaxBulk Mailer” from Max Programming. It does have some of the automated features such as remove email links, I will have to check on it bounce mail handling.



Thanks again,



David