ZeroBounce CEO Reveals Tips for Email Marketing Success

At the end of 2023, over 50% of marketers have reported a 100% improvement rate in their email marketing campaigns’ ROI.

This is a significant feat worth replicating in 2024 amid growing competition. If you’re keen to nail your email marketing strategies, then consider leveraging proven tactics shared by our esteemed guest.

Liviu Tanase, founder and CEO of ZeroBounce, an email validation and list-cleaning platform, shares with DesignRush tips on how businesses can successfully connect with consumers via email and how they can comply with Microsoft's efforts to reinforce email authentication in September 2024.

Who Is Liviu Tanase?

With over 16 years of experience in developing, growing, and selling innovative technologies, Liviu has founded five companies, leading them from startups to revenue-generating organizations. He has achieved three successful exits, yielding quadruple-digit returns for founders and investors. Liviu holds master’s degrees in Entrepreneurship and Business Administration and is recognized in the Forbes Next 1000 list of “entrepreneurial heroes redefining the American dream.”

According to Liviu, the biggest pain point companies face when they approach ZeroBounce is that they get high bounce rates on their email campaigns.

“A high bounce rate is detrimental to email marketing as you’re not reaching those prospects. But bounces cause additional trouble: they taint a sender’s reputation with inbox providers.

As your reputation declines, your email campaigns go to the spam box. When your bounce rate is out of control (for instance, over 10%), inbox providers can block your emails altogether.

That’s because now you’re perceived as an untrustworthy sender — potentially a spammer who sends emails randomly to as many contacts as possible, regardless of their validity,” he explains.

The Impact of Email Validation

Global email marketing revenue was forecasted by Statista to increase from $8.3 billion in 2023 to $37.5 in 2032.

To successfully take part in this market, it's crucial for marketers to maintain and grow a valid email list by weeding out unnecessary data.

“Email validation is the fastest and most accurate way to filter out obsolete data and help businesses reach their customers and prospects. Emailing invalid contacts and getting lots of bounces and spam reports makes senders look like spammers,” Liviu advises.

According to the CEO, the key benefits of using email validation are:

• Better sender reputation: A great reputation means your emails get delivered to the inbox, while a low score will cause your campaigns to land in spam. Keeping your bounces under 2% and your spam reports under 0.1% boosts your reputation, and email validation has a direct effect on it.
• Increased metrics and sales: Businesses using an email validator to maintain healthy email lists see a boost in their overall engagement right away. Landing in the inbox allows them the opportunity to connect with their audience, forge stronger relationships, and increase sales.
• Lower email marketing and CRM costs: By removing invalid and risky contacts, email validation helps businesses save money on their email marketing and sales efforts. Once they use an email validator, they can be rid of that poor-quality data instead of paying to store it in their CRMs and email systems.

“We hear from many of our customers who tell us they’re astonished to discover how much bad data they were paying to store — and how much getting rid of it boosts their metrics,” he adds.

Liviu points out that ideally, businesses and individuals running email campaigns should validate their databases and do email list cleaning at least once every quarter.

However, as he puts it, the frequency can differ depending on:

• The type of market: B2B email marketing lists degrade faster than B2C because work contacts become invalid when people switch jobs. B2B businesses must be mindful of how fragile their email data is.
• How quickly your email list is growing: Due to over 25% of the average email database going bad annually, Liviu advises that businesses with rapidly growing lists should clean more frequently to avoid bounces and ensure emails reach the inbox.
• The type of audience segments you’re targeting: Lists segmented by engagement levels require regular checks on dormant subscribers. Running re-engagement campaigns can help identify inactive contacts. If they remain unresponsive, they should be removed to prevent bounces.

Liviu adds that a comprehensive email validation entails checking the syntax and format of the email address to ensure it’s properly formatted and verifying that the domain exists and is correctly configured to receive emails.

It's also important to validate marketing experience (MX) record checks necessary for sending and receiving email messages and assess the domain reputation to detect any potential spam or fraudulent activity.

Email Scoring for Better Segmentation and Targeting

There are different kinds of email scoring, but in the context of email validation, Liviu shares that his team focuses on two key goals to help their customers succeed:

“'Catch-all' email scoring addresses domains with a ‘catch-all’ setting, receiving all emails even if specific mailboxes don’t exist. Services like ZeroBounce can flag these but can't always confirm their validity. Email scoring software further investigates these emails to determine usage.

Email engagement scoring measures how actively subscribers engage with their inboxes. After validation, it’s beneficial to know the activity levels of valid subscribers. ZeroBounce’s Activity Data identifies the most active users, allowing segmentation by engagement levels, improving targeting and results," he explains.

Triggered email marketing, which enables companies to send automated email responses, is one way to increase engagement and build loyalty with customers and prospects. Watch the clip below to learn how to leverage triggered emails:

Liviu also shared with me their case study on Gene Massey, founder of MediaShares, who faced a bounce rate of 12% — well above the industry benchmark of 2% — prompting his email service provider to block him.

“Massey validated his email list with ZeroBounce, reducing his bounce rate to almost zero, reinstating his account, and improving his sender reputation, metrics, and conversion rates," he concludes.

Creating Safer Email Inboxes in 2024

Following Google and Yahoo in their efforts to create safer inboxes, starting September 2024, Microsoft will require email authentication.

Hence, I asked Liviu what businesses should know about this and how they can comply with its authentication and sending rules.

"Google and Yahoo’s decision to enforce email authentication — and other sending rules — is one of the most significant updates in the email industry in recent years. It was only a matter of time for Microsoft to follow suit.

These guidelines aren’t new. Many email senders adopted them a long time ago, but now, large email providers are making them mandatory,” he says.

According to Liviu, this is how businesses can comply with this new rule:

• Authenticate emails: Mass senders must authenticate emails to verify legitimacy and protect domains from spoofing and spam, helping emails bypass spam filters.
• Unsubscribing in one click: Users should be able to opt-out with one click, and businesses must honor unsubscribe requests within two days.
• Keeping spam reports low: To maintain inbox placement, businesses must keep spam complaint rates low, ideally under 0.3% and preferably 0.1%. High complaint rates signal spam to inbox providers.

“Internet service providers (like Verizon or Comcast) and email providers (like Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft) are building stronger systems to combat the spread and threat of spam. For senders, that means tougher rules. But if you want results from your email marketing, you must follow these rules.

Given these strict authentication rules, businesses should ensure they stay compliant. By authenticating emails, simplifying unsubscribe processes, and keeping spam reports low, they can secure their place in the inbox and elevate their email marketing success," he explains.

Liviu shares his final thoughts on how businesses can adapt to the changing landscape of email marketing:

“Build your list responsibly, validate it at least once a quarter, authenticate your domains, and send your subscribers the emails they want. You have to do things right to reap the benefits.”

On top of quality content and visuals to grab your target audience's attention, successfully building an email list and creating email marketing campaigns also involve periodic maintenance in the form of validation and list cleaning.

Editing by Katherine 'Makkie' Maclang