I cant see why that would be a problem in principle Jeff as long as your not discussing spamming forums with my content.

Even when my clients use an ESP I am always more comfortable when they (my clients) are in control of the bounce handling situation.

Typically a client that relies on list size for revenue will only remove on 4th bounce and not before, many others are happy to do it on the third bounce.

Interspire makes this easy, or as is typical with my client setups Exim BoogieTools for bounce management.

With reticient clients I have suggested that if they aren't confident the bounce is really a bounce, then after the second bounce try through an alternate option (for a example an ESP provided fair warning).

Hope that makes some sense, I don't think my clients are so unique and think there are plenty of commercial mailers managing affairs inhouse with a little external support/consultancy but not utilising an ESP.

Also a very good point you made there Rob in regards to needing to know what your ESP does exactly and how it handles things like bounces. Another issue on the flipside that I have encountered, with clients not using an ESP. I have seen them unsubscribe swathes of users that haven't bounced 3 times consecutively, but simply bounced 3 times in the lifetime of the client, and then wondered why there list appeared to be constantly decimated.

I hope there is feedback from others - I honestly doubt many people would go so far as to wonder if the clock gets reset every 30 days etc.

No worries Rob, The whole discussion was great for me as it gave me impetus to push a client. Agreed $3 a head is nothing in comparison to the damage that can be caused.

I have convinced them that if they have not opened or clicked after a predetermined series of contacts that the client is emailed explaining that they feel they may not be gaining value from the newsletters, but if we got it wrong just click here to let us know your alive and reconfirm your subscription, yadda yadda.

If they cant be bothered to do that they aren't worth having n the list surely :)

Hi Rob,

What I might want to do is often besides the point when ... I need to convince my client.

From experience getting a marketer to give up a single email address which hasn't asked to unsubscribe is very hard to do. Understandable if they tried hard to go through the whole double opt-in closed loop process to win that valuable set of eyeballs.

Clients tell me the cost of acquisition can be as high as $3 per address, that said if they really arent reading they aren't worth anything and costing you money to maintain - agreed. So how I deal with it when it arises with my clients..

Well we can tell some of those who opened, we can also tell who has clicked, hopefully we also have a note of those who responded directly. Those are all keepers obviously.

Then there is the balance, hopefully if the deliverability issue's have been addressed etc then lets say the typical client will be looking at 15%-45% open rates per mailing, if they have something of real value maybe much higher. My clients typically sit towards the middle of that range on average.

If this is the case then over the period of 3 or 4 mailings you should be able to gain data on responsive address of anywhere from 45% - 75% of the overall subscriber base. This is obviously back of a ciggie packet maths here...

The balance of subscriber you need to do something special with to try ang get them to engage... a blog in its own right... failing that a new permission pass...

"We do not seem to have had your attention recently and were considering removing you from our list. Click here if you would like to reconfirm your subscription now and ensure you don't miss out on yadda yadda"

PS The CSS Reference is Gold- thanks for bringing it to my attention

Whilst most of your advice is solid I must confess that I have reservations with one point

"(stop sending to unopens)" - how are you sure they are not opening

I agree engagement is key and opens and click-thru are important, however how can you be sure an email has not been opened?

I rarely have images switched on for senders so they cannot track me like that. I often gain lots of value from my subscriptions without ever clicking a link.

Thanks, modifications made.. How did you find this post.. ahh the autotweet, will switch it off while I complete site updates. Only just unblocked the search engines to allow them in and start indexing content.

Thanks, apologies for oversight. Now done and @email_expert is following you.

Thanks for the suggestion Richard, this list is more for key individuals within the industry as opposed to ESP's. If you would like to nominate someone or even yourself for inclusion on the list feel free (I am not sure of your personal twitter account). I have however started to follow @striata on Twitter and added you to the list of ESP's. If you have press releases or vancancies please do get in touch.

More on this story....
Media Matters Jumps to Defend Unsolicited White House Emails to Federal Employees
by Richard Grenell :

http://biggovernment.com/rgrenell/2010/03/21/medi...