Emails sent to Inactive Email Addresses can spell trouble for marketers

[mandy]

Typically an e-mail marketer's list-hygiene practices will involve removing hard bounces, or e-mails that are returned because the addresses are invalid. Marketers also typically have internal rules for dealing with soft bounces, or delivery-status messages stating that the e-mail could not be delivered for some temporary reason, such as the recipient's inbox is full or the mail server is too busy.

But an effective bounce-handling strategy is not enough to keep inbox providers from blocking a marketer's e-mail, Eichner says. The reason: Just because a list is permission based and clean from a bounce-oriented perspective doesn't mean people on the list won't complain about the e-mail they receive.

Moreover, people will hit the "this is spam" button simply to unsubscribe. As a result, according to Eichner, it is important to know when to remove inactive addresses to avoid the inevitable spam complaints that will come from people who hold them...

full article: http://multichannelmerchant.com/webchann..._01032007/