Ever wondered what to do with your "other" bounced contacts? Find out how to tackle these with automation and sequences.
There's nothing worse than when people subscribe to your marketing emails and then bounce for an unknown reason.
This hack dives into a practical strategy for re-engaging contacts who have bounced for mysterious reasons. We'll guide you through creating a targeted sequence and workflow that encourages these contacts to add you to their allow list, giving you another chance to connect and nurture those valuable leads.
1. Create your sequence
This is a quick and easy step. If you have access to sequences in HubSpot, head over to Automation > Sequences and create a new sequence from scratch.
Here's what you'll need to do:
- Write your email template: This email should clearly explain to the recipient that they've bounced and politely ask them to add your email address to their allow list. (Which you can find below). If they get stuck figuring out how to create/add to an allow list, then you can send them the details explaining how to do exactly this.
- Find your allow list details:
- Go to Marketing > Marketing Email.
- In the top right corner, click Email Tools, then select Manage allow listing.
- You'll see a list of your sender email addresses. Copy all of them to include in your email template.
2. Workflow time
Before sending your re-engagement sequence, you need to filter your contacts to ensure you're targeting the right ones. This workflow will help you identify valid email addresses and take appropriate action for invalid ones.
Here's how to set up your workflow:
- Create a new workflow in HubSpot.
- Enrolment trigger: Set the enrolment trigger to "Email hard bounce reason is any of Other". This ensures only contacts who have bounced for an unknown reason are enrolled.
- Unsubscribe from marketing emails: Add an action to "Unsubscribe" contacts from all marketing email subscriptions. This prevents you from sending them further marketing emails while they're in the re-engagement sequence.
- Add an if/then branch to filter contacts based on email validity.
- Valid email address branch: For contacts with valid email addresses, enrol them in the re-engagement sequence you created in Step 1.
- Invalid email address branch: For contacts with invalid email addresses, you can follow the steps outlined in this hack. This will guide you on how to handle these contacts effectively.
This workflow ensures that you're only targeting contacts with potentially valid email addresses with your re-engagement sequence, while also managing invalid email addresses appropriately.
- After enrolling contacts in the sequence, add a delay. This gives your contacts time to receive and respond to your email. A delay of 7 days is a good starting point, but you can adjust this based on your preferences.
- After the delay, add an if/then branch to assess engagement with the sequence. You can base this branch on various criteria, such as:
- Engaged contacts: If the contact engaged with the sequence (e.g., replied or clicked a link), it indicates they've likely added you to their allow list. In this branch add an action to resubscribe the contact to your marketing emails. Go to the contact's record and manually clear the hard bounce status. This ensures HubSpot recognizes them as a valid contact again.
- Unengaged contacts: If the contact didn't engage with the sequence or hard bounced again, it's likely their email address is invalid or they're not interested. In this branch, apply the same actions as the "Invalid email address branch" from Step 2. This might involve adding them to a suppression list or removing them from your CRM.
For the contacts that have landed in your review lists, you can set up a notification within this workflow for your HubSpot admin to receive a notification on the list to make sure contacts are reviewed and potentially deleted from the CRM.
Author: Mia-Jean Lee
Digital Marketing Executive