A clean list gets your campaigns into more inboxes and keeps your sending from being paused.
Why This Matters
Every Tern advisor's campaigns send from the same domain. When emails bounce or get marked as spam, inbox providers trust that domain less, and that affects every advisor's campaigns.
If a campaign gets too many bounces, spam reports, or unsubscribes, Tern pauses sending for all your campaigns. This is called a sending hold. The steps below keep that from happening.
Before Your First Campaign
Do these steps before you subscribe a large group of contacts, especially if they came from an import or haven't heard from you in a while.
Step 1: Bring your unsubscribes with you
If you've used another email tool, like Mailchimp or Flodesk, that tool knows who opted out. Don't go from memory. Emailing someone who already opted out is the fastest way to get reported as spam.
Export your unsubscribe, bounce, and spam complaint lists from your old email tool.
Add an Email Marketing Status column to the file and set it to Unsubscribed for every row.
Import the file with an Import Basic Details import. See Managing Subscribers and Unsubscribes, Option 1, for how to match the columns.
Note: Unsubscribing is permanent. Only include people who opted out, bounced, or reported spam.
Step 2: Fix or remove placeholder addresses
If you entered fake or placeholder emails for contacts you didn't have an address for, those emails will bounce.
Go to Contacts and search for the placeholder you used.
Open each contact and update the email, or leave the contact Not opted.
Step 3: Check a big list with an email checker
If you have hundreds of contacts you haven't emailed in a while, run them through an email checker like NeverBounce first. It flags addresses that are likely to bounce.
Go to Contacts, click Actions, and select Export filtered contacts.
Upload the file to your email checker and download the results.
Subscribe only the addresses marked valid. Leave the rest Not opted.
Step 4: Start with the people you know
Contacts who've traveled with you or heard from you recently are the least likely to bounce or report spam. Subscribe them first.
Go to Contacts and select the My Contacts tab.
Click Filter.
Under Trips, check only Has a trip. To include people you've been in touch with, check Emailed under Email history instead.
Under Email marketing, check only Not opted.
Click Show results.
Select the contacts who agreed to hear from you. You can select up to 100 at a time.
Click Edit marketing subscription, select Subscribed, confirm you have permission, and click Save.
Step 5: Send to them first, then go wider
Create a Segment with the contacts from Step 4 and send your campaign to it.
Check your results after the campaign finishes. Look at the Bounced and Spam reports cards.
If both are low, subscribe the next group and repeat. Never subscribe contacts you don't have permission to email.
After Every Campaign: Opt Out Bounced Contacts
Tern doesn't change a contact's subscription when an email bounces. If you leave a bounced contact Subscribed, your next campaign emails them again, and that bounce counts against you again.
Open the campaign and click the Bounced card.
Click a contact's name in Recipient activity to open their profile.
On the Email marketing subscription card, click Edit.
Select Not opted and click Save. If you have a corrected address, update the contact's email instead.
Repeat for each contact in the Bounced tab.
Contacts who marked your email as spam or clicked unsubscribe are already Unsubscribed. You don't need to do anything for them.
If Your Sending Is Paused
If you see "Campaign sending is paused," Tern has placed a sending hold on your account. Only Tern support can lift it. Do these steps first so we can lift it quickly:
Set every bounced contact from the paused campaign to Not opted. Follow the steps in the section above.
Narrow your list. Follow Before Your First Campaign, Step 4. If you subscribed a large group of contacts at once, set the ones you haven't been in touch with back to Not opted.
Message Tern support and tell us what you changed.
Note: Don't duplicate the paused campaign and send it to the same Segment. Everyone in the Segment would get it again, including the people who already received it. Tern support will help you send it to the contacts who didn't get it.
Common Issues
"I can't find the contacts who bounced."
Open the campaign and click the Bounced card. Every contact listed there bounced on that campaign.
"I set a contact to Not opted, but another contact changed too."
Contacts that share a primary email address share one subscription status. Changing one changes all of them.
"I unsubscribed a contact by mistake."
Unsubscribes can't be undone. To subscribe them again, send them a form with the Email marketing opt-in element.