Yesterday I noticed I hadn’t gotten any emails from Jacob Pegs in a while.
As you might know, Jacob runs an online business called Modern Maker, which consists of him, a set of headphones, and I guess an Internet connection.
And yet, as I write this, Jacob and his Modern Maker online business are rolling into the million-dollar revenue mark for 2024, with something like a 95%-98% profit margin.
Jacob asked me to coach him on email copywriting earlier this year, and so I did, and I got on his email list as part of that. But I haven’t been getting his emails lately. I checked. Nothing, since November 20.
I wrote to Jacob yesterday to see if he’s alive and to ask what’s up with the no emails. He replied a few minutes later:
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What that’s weird!
I’ve been emailing daily. Let me check that for you 😮 really appreciate you letting me know. WTF!
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It turned out I had been “bounced” off his list. “Bounced,” as far as I understand, is a special mystery status for when an email cannot be delivered, for reasons that are not listed inside services like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign.
I’ve already been bounced a few times off other newsletters. I have a custom domain (bejakovic dot com), and the email address associated with that is more flaky than your typical gmail or yahoo email address. Sometimes, I noticed weeks or months later I had stopped getting emails from somebody.
This affects me the other way around also. Last week, I got an email from marketer Fred Beyer, who wrote:
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I haven’t gotten a single email from you, since Nov 13th.
But my personal email address is still getting your emails so I KNOW you’re still broadcasting.
I had NameCheap crap out on me and shut down my domain for a few days, did your ESP auto-scrub me because of the temporary bounce?
I have bought products from you, from both of my email addresses so I’m guessing it’s kinda important that I’m a proper part of your system to receive any updates and such.
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I checked inside ConvertKit. Sure enough, Fred had also been bounced off. I added him back — the only way was to go to my home page and sign him up by hand.
I checked the analytics for my email from last night. 4 bounced subscribers, compared to 3 unsubscribes. Now, I guess not all of those bounced subscribers will be permanently unsubscribed. But some will. Since September, I’ve had 67 subscribers permanently removed because of bounces, and these include long-term readers and customers.
What to do?
I already wrote a while back about “unwilling unsubscribes,” people who got unsubscribed in spite of swearing to me they never meant to do so.
That issue seems largely solved by a two-step unsubscribe process, which more and more email senders now provide.
But this bounced thing is both more tricky and more serious. For one, because it seems more common. For another, because it seems to disproportionately affect people with custom domains.
All that’s to say, I’m just bouncing this bounced problem at you, hoping you can bounce a solution or at least a suggestion back at me.
Is there some tech thing to be done?
Or is the only reliable way around this to have two or five ways to reach your customers and prospects? Email… plus Skool community… plus work phone number… plus SMS… plus bedroom GPS coordinates?
Please bounce back any information or suggestions you can give me. In turn I promise to collate the answers I get and share the most useful-sounding ones.