In every Email List, you can see each individual subscriber's Status and Rating:
Status Definitions
Bounces
A bounce is a message that is returned to the server that sent it. Bounced emails are either a permanent failure to deliver the email or a temporary failure to deliver the email, based on conditions with the recipient mail server.
Cleaned - Bounced
Reflects two types of cleaned emails. Hard bounces and emails that have been blocked 8 times. On the 8th block, the subscriber becomes a Bounce and gets a Cleaned-Bounced status.
Ex. Domain name doesn’t exist
Cleaned - Invalid
An invalid email occurs when you attempt to send an email to an address that is formatted in a manner that does not meet Internet email format standards. This response comes from Springbot's own server since an invalid email is impossible to even attempt to send to its [non-existent] destination.
Ex. addresses without the “@” sign or addresses that include certain special characters and/or spaces.
Hard Bounces
A hard bounce is an email message that has been returned to the sender because the recipient's address is invalid. If an email is on the bounce list, we will auto drop any future requests to this email address.
A hard bounce might occur because the domain name doesn't exist or because the recipient is unknown.
Non-engaged
Contact who has not opened, clicked or “created at” an email within the set time frame of the engagement threshold
Soft Bounces
A soft bounce is an email message that gets as far as the recipient's mail server but is bounced back undelivered before it gets to the intended recipient.
A soft bounce might occur because the recipient's inbox is full.
Subscribed (Engaged)
Contact who has opened, clicked or “confirmed at” an email within the set time frame of the engagement threshold
Determining Engagement Scores and Star Ratings
All new subscribers start with a 2-star rating and an engagement score of 0 when they are first added to an email list. As these subscribers start to take certain actions, their engagement score goes up or down depending on the action they took. Looking at data from your entire list, your contacts will then be ranked against each other based on how much higher/lower their score is from your overall store average.
0 / 1 stars: much worse than average
2 stars: below average, starting point for new contacts
3 stars: above average
4 / 5 stars: much better than average
Here are just a few examples of how a contact's actions influence their engagement score:
When a contact ... | Their engagement score changes by ... |
Has an email campaign successfully delivered to their inbox | +1 |
Opens an email campaign | +2 |
Clicks on a link in an email campaign | +3 |
Marks an email campaign as SPAM | -2 |
Is marked as "Cleaned-Bounced" or Cleaned-Invalid" in Springbot | -3 |
Is unsubscribed | -3 |
You can export your email list to see the exact engagement score for any contact. Your exported CSV has a column labeled Engagement Score for their specific score and a column labeled Rating to see their respective Star Rating.
Optimizing Star Ratings
When creating an email campaign, you can build a Dynamic List to filter your Email List by specific star ratings. Go to Audience > Dynamic Lists.
Here are some ways you can use Star Rankings in your email marketing:
Treat 4 and 5 star contacts as VIPs – you can send them targeted promotions, early notices of new products or sales, and encourage them to tell their friends about your store! Regular sending to a highly engaged list like these contacts will help with overall email deliverability.
2 star contacts are at risk for being a lost customer, either because they are brand new to your list or have not been engaging with your content. Entice these subscribers with subject lines that will draw their attention and encourage them to open and click your emails. You can also include an incentive such as free shipping or a discount code to encourage engagement with your emails.
0 -1 star contacts may be harming your deliverability because they're very unengaged with your emails. It's best practice to periodically unsubscribe these contacts from your list, or only sending to the 1s and 2s once or twice per month.