Have you been noticing a spike over the last few days in bounced emails from Yahoo addresses?
If so, you’d be among many email marketers who did.
But don’t worry; it’s definitely not our email marketing software that’s suddenly gone haywire, and you can also bet your bottom dollar a lot of people didn’t all just coincidentally close down their Yahoo! email accounts at once.
What's actually happened, as reported by Yahoo, is that between 11 and 14 August they had some issues within their own system, and that as a result lots of messages were bounced out - as though they were sent to unknown users.
The email delivery experts at Return Path got right on it and helped Yahoo! identify and correct the problem in a snap; so nobody should be having trouble anymore.
With that said, if your bulk newsletter sends of this week have been affected by Yahoo’s little gremlins, here are 3 great solutions to help you do something about it:
1) If you’re a GraphicMail client, this will be an easy fix - since our Reports track and record your all campaign activity in detail, including bounces
Go into our Reports “On Sends” section from the main menu in the application, and look at any recent emails you’ve fired off between the dates mentioned.
On the left you’ll immediately see a log for “Bounced” messages (right below “Delivered”).
Click on it and a pie chart will appear for all the domains your email bounced on. Next click the list view in the top right hand corner, to see all the individual addresses that didn’t get your mailer.
If the list is too long for you to get a quick overview of, type and search for the text “554 delivery error: dd This user doesn’t have a yahoo.com account” in the “Reason” box in the top area of the page.
The list will now be filtered to show only addresses that were affected by the bug, if any.
Once you have these contacts in hand, simply try re-sending the same bounced email to them.
If you’re concerned about risking your sender reputation by sending to addresses that didn’t bounce because of the bug; try segmenting all the flagged subscribers and then send to them gradually over a few days.
2) If you’re not a GraphicMail client and / or if your ESP isn’t advanced enough to keep bounce logs, you will have to resend to all Yahoo! mail contacts in your list
Be careful when attempting this though, since you don’t want to do anything that may make you look like a spammer.
Segment all your Yahoo contacts and send your email campaign to them again, bit by bit.
Tip 1: If you have many Yahoo users in your list, create multiple segments - in groups of about 20 to 30. Don’t crop everyone together.
Tip 2: Maybe add a sub heading underneath your main call-out or banner, informing people why they may be receiving the same marketing mailer for the second time, and apologize for any inconvenience caused. With any luck, this way nobody will feel the need to unsubscribe.
3) Lastly, you can also think about only re-sending those Yahoo! email addresses that bounced, but that have also shown email campaign engagement in the past; like opens and clicks
It’s pretty unlikely that any of these were valid bounces; but if you want to save some money by filtering who to send to according to engagement; focus mainly on email interaction within the last four weeks, since these subscribers are sure to be alive, kicking and interested in hearing from you
