Clean up contacts to improve email deliverability

Marketing & Content Hub Email Deliverability
1

I sent out my first email marketing and had several bounce rates about 11 bounced back from 55 sent. I researched those 11 and found many who had new jobs. I had imported these files from my prior CRM so I assumed they were good. How can I now send the remaining emails in the this first batch?

2

Hi @dsaksena,

Here’s what I would recommend doing:

  1. Under your current marketing email, click into the “Recipients” tab, then find the bounced contacts in the left sidebar, click that menu item, then use the dropdown on the right to create a segment from those contacts
  2. Clone the marketing email: Clone HubSpot content
  3. Update the email address on the bounced contacts
  4. Add the segment from step 1 as recipient segment to the newly cloned email

Alternatively, simply update the emails of the bounced contacts and add them individually, one by one, to a cloned version of your initial email.

Best regards

3

I wouldn’t send the rest of the imported batch as-is. Eleven bounces from 55 sends is 20%, well above HubSpot’s 5% hard-bounce suspension threshold, so another unfiltered send puts the sending account at risk.

HubSpot will automatically suppress addresses that hard-bounced for a permanent reason. Put every not-yet-emailed imported contact into a temporary holdout segment, verify current employment/address, and remove anyone whose company or role changed. Separately confirm the source of marketing consent—deliverable is not the same as opted in.

Resume with the smallest, newest/highest-confidence cohort and watch hard-bounce and spam-report rates before releasing the next cohort. If you cannot establish both a current address and a valid reason to market to that person, keep them in the CRM as non-marketing instead of using a campaign to test the address.