The growing use of temporary emails has become a constant concern for those working in email marketing.

The presence of these emails on lists causes high bounce rates (emails that fail to be delivered and bounce back to senders).

The fact that it’s not possible to communicate with an address that doesn’t exist damages the performance of marketing actions as a whole.

The result is a low-quality contact list, which ends up affecting your email marketing ROI.

And the ROI of email marketing deserves special attention, because of its incredible US$ 42 compared to every US$ 1 of investment. This is the highest return in digital marketing.

In this post, we’ll understand how a temporary email can harm your email marketing. We’ll also discuss effective strategies for identifying and eliminating temporary email from your lists, ensuring that your campaigns reach real, active recipients.

Read on to find out everything you need to know about the dangers of this type of email and how to combat it.

What are temporary emails

Temporary email, also known as disposable email, is an email address created to be used for a short period of time, which can vary between hours or days.

It is often used to access online services without the user providing any personal data.

There are platforms that offer email temp services, generating a random email address that can be used to receive messages during the validity period. After the stipulated time, the address expires and the messages received are deleted automatically.

These emails represent a challenge for email marketers, starting with the illusion of initial engagement, since the user may temporarily interact with the content, but the address quickly becomes non-existent.

This results in high bounce rates and distortions in engagement metrics, as seen above.

Therefore, understanding what temporary emails are and how they work is very important for developing strategies to minimize their negative impact on email marketing campaigns.

The impact of temporary email on bounce rates

Bounce rates refer to the number of emails that fail to be delivered to the recipient and are returned to the sender.

There are two classifications of bounces:

• Soft bounces: failures that can be fixed by restoring email validation once the problem has been resolved. For example: server temporarily down; email size too large; temporary network problems, etc.
• Hard bounces: permanent delivery failures that invalidate the email irreversibly. For example: invalid or non-existent emails; non-existent domain; deactivated or deleted email.

Lists containing at least 3% bounces are blocked by ISPs and, since a hard bounce is an irreversible failure, its presence on lists is very serious for the sender’s reputation.

How temporary email affects the reputation of senders

The temporary email becomes non-existent, and this has a very negative impact on the senders’ credibility.

Recipients’ ISPs closely monitor the sending of bulk emails. As we saw earlier, the temporary email becomes non-existent because it expires, culminating in a hard bounce.

A sequence of blocks and interrupted communication with leads leads to wasted investment, as the sender’s IP and domain are labeled as spammer. This culminates in inclusion on international spammer blacklists.

In short, a list full of bounces generates a high bounce rate, signaling to the recipients’ providers a precarious and outdated contact list.

How temporary emails distort engagement rates

The presence of temporary emails on unverified lists distorts engagement metrics. This is because the user only interacts temporarily with the content of the email marketing.

When the email expires, those metrics will relate to emails that no longer exist.

As a result, the open and click rates recorded will not serve as a parameter for strategy adjustments, making campaigns appear more effective than they really are. As a result, in future mailings, for example, bounce rates will increase and open rates will tend to decrease.

To avoid these distortions and get a true view of engagement metrics, it is essential to remove temporary emails from lists by verifying emails. In this way, the KPI analyses will reflect the real behavior of the leads.

Best practices for building and maintaining a healthy mailing list

To build a healthy email base, professionals need to collect the “opt-in”, which is the recipients’ permission to receive communications from the company.

This permission is part of a registration form, which offers the prospect access to some rich material, such as an ebook, PDF, webinar, etc. In return, the user grants permission to receive the emails.

However, creating disposable emails is a practice of many users, and this makes it common for there to be many bounces on lists that originate from forms.

Real-time email verification identifies temporary email addresses before they enter your contact list.

This service checks the validity of email addresses at the time of collection, ensuring that only real, active emails are added to your database.

Thus, when a temporary or invalid email is entered into a registration form, the verification API suggests that a new email address be entered, and only allows the user to proceed with their activities if they enter a valid email.

It is essential to constantly sanitize lists in order to maintain the quality of registration. Email verification recognizes and removes invalid and harmful addresses, including temporary emails, improving deliverability and, consequently, the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Why temporary e-mail is harmful

The presence of temporary email addresses on email marketing lists can lead to very high additional costs for companies.

One of the main reasons for this is the waste of financial resources sending to addresses that soon become inactive.

On the other hand, many email marketing platforms set their budgets based on the number of emails sent, or the size of the contact list.

Therefore, sending messages to an unverified list means an unnecessary increase in operating costs.

In addition, high bounce rates from these addresses can result in senders being included on international spam blacklists.

With a database full of temporary emails, even professionals’ time is wasted, as their efforts will be fruitless in the face of non-existent emails.

And as with all cases of low-quality lists, the delivery rate of messages decreases, negatively affecting click-through rates and conversions.

In other words, the presence of temporary emails on lists causes financial losses as well as time losses for the employees involved.

Eliminate temporary emails and maximize campaign ROI

Achieve a high ROI by implementing strategies that not only increase the effectiveness of communication, but also protect against the damage caused by temporary e-mail.

Here are some suggestions:

• Make the most of everything automation can offer: segment the contact list appropriately.
• Personalize campaigns based on leads’ behavioural data. This way you can increase open and engagement rates.
• Monitor campaign performance: analyze KPIs and adjust strategies. This way, you maximize results over time.
• Avoid wasting money on temporary or low-quality emails by using email verification services.

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