How Are You Monitoring Your Inbox?

By: Dominique Blanc
Submitted: 2007-04-24 14:17:37
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You've got an email list, composed your newsletter and clicked the Send button in your email program to distribute the newsletter to your subscribers. Then you are anxiously watching that your Inbox is being filled in with different kinds of emails coming in response to your message. Not all of those emails are the replies from your subscribers. You'll see out-of-office replies; unsubscribe requests, challenge responses, block and bounce reports, address-update notifications, and others. Those messages, most generated automatically, arrive to your main account but not to your bounced managing address. What do you do with them? Should you simply ignore those emails or handle them in any way? Although such messages make a tiny part of your list, they can affect the list integrity if you don't act on them promptly. Here is how you should manage your email replies:

Bouncebacks. As a rule they come to your account specifically setup for managing returned messages. If you don't have a bounced-handling account, the emails will return to your main "reply-to" address. Bounced emails are telling you that the recipient's email address is undeliverable and require a prompt action. You need to clear undeliverable emails from your list before you send your next newsletter.

Example:

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:

email@address1.com

mailbox is full: retry timeout exceeded

Address-update notifications. These messages notify you that the recipient abandoned his email address and got a new one. You need to update your email list accordingly.

Example:

Hi, my email address email@address1.com is no longer valid. Please, use the email email@address2.com instead.

Warnings. This is just a warning message telling you that the system will re-try to deliver your message a few times. If the message is still not delivered, the system will give up and the email will be returned to you. Such emails require no action from you. You can simply delete them from your Inbox.

Example:

The address to which the message has not yet been delivered is:

email@address1.com

No action is required on your part. Delivery attempts will continue for some time, and this warning may be repeated at intervals if the message remains undelivered. Eventually the mail delivery software will give up, and when that happens, the message will be returned to you.

Out-of-office replies. They make the majority of the auto-replies. They don't require any action. Such emails just tell you that the recipient has no access to his mail now and will check it at a later time.

Example:

I will be out of the office until April, 30 and will not be able to check emails. If you need an urgent need, please, contact...

Auto-acknowledgments. These emails just notify you that your message was received. They don't require any action. You can remove them from your Inbox.

Example:

Hi, this is an automated system reply. Thanks for your email. We will try to respond within the next 12-24 hours.

Challenge-response emails. This is the most important category of automated replies. You must act on these emails in order the recipient's security system allows your message to be delivered. As a rule you must reply to these messages, or click on the link provided in the message and type a verification code on the displayed page. You usually have to do it once to get your message delivered. But if you don't act, your message will be blocked or moved to a Spam folder.

Example:

The message you sent requires the sender verification. To complete the verification, please, reply to this message and leave the Subject line intact.

Feedbacks and unsubscribe requests. These are personal messages from the recipients. The subscribers can reply to your message reporting about any problems concerning viewing or reading your message, or send you a feedback on your message content. You need to reply to those emails to show your subscribers that you care about them. Then, some subscribers may not use your unsubscribe link and request to be removed via email. You'll need to remove their email addresses from your list and reply them with a confirmation that they were taken off.

Example:

Hi, I don't want to want to receive the newsletters any longer and would like to unsubscribe. Please, take me off. Thank you.

Besides your main mailbox you should also check the email accounts like postmaster@, abuse@ that collect any kinds of messages. Some of the emails we've just described can end up in those mailboxes too.

Article source: Expert Articles