Audience hygiene
A clean list deliverable to active people is worth ten times a “bigger” list full of dead addresses. The math is simple: bounce rate and complaint rate determine your sending reputation. List hygiene is the lever you control.
The healthy list metric
Section titled “The healthy list metric”For a list to be safe to send to:
| Metric | Target | Action threshold |
|---|---|---|
| Hard bounce rate | < 1% | Pause + clean if > 2% |
| Soft bounce rate | < 3% | Investigate if > 5% |
| Complaint rate | < 0.05% | Pause immediately if > 0.1% |
| Unsubscribe rate | < 0.5% per send | Investigate if > 1% |
| Engagement rate (90-day open or click) | > 20% | Re-engage or remove if < 10% |
What to clean
Section titled “What to clean”Hard bounces — remove permanently
Section titled “Hard bounces — remove permanently”Already on 3AVA Mail’s suppression list. Don’t re-add.
Repeated soft bounces — remove after 4 attempts
Section titled “Repeated soft bounces — remove after 4 attempts”If the same address soft-bounces four times in a row (4 send attempts, all 4 soft-fail), treat it as effectively dead. 3AVA Mail auto-suppresses these.
Role addresses — remove
Section titled “Role addresses — remove”info@, admin@, support@, sales@, webmaster@ — these are usually monitored mailboxes. Mail to them is more likely to get marked as spam by the recipient organization. Strip them out before importing.
Spam traps — remove (if you can identify them)
Section titled “Spam traps — remove (if you can identify them)”Pristine spam traps (addresses that have never opted in to anything) are how providers detect bought lists. You can’t identify them directly — but if you have addresses you didn’t explicitly collect, they’re statistically risky. Don’t import them.
Long-dormant — re-engage or remove
Section titled “Long-dormant — re-engage or remove”If someone hasn’t opened or clicked in 12 months, send a single re-engagement email asking if they want to stay on the list. Anyone who doesn’t open or click that one — remove.
Verification at import time
Section titled “Verification at import time”3AVA Mail verifies email syntax and runs an SMTP probe at import. Each address ends up classified as:
- valid — safe to send to
- invalid — syntactic or domain-level failure; auto-suppressed
- risky — disposable address, role address, or catch-all domain
- unknown — verification timed out
Send only to valid for new domains/IPs. Add risky with caution after warmup is complete; never send to invalid.
Don’t buy lists
Section titled “Don’t buy lists”This is the one rule with no exceptions. Bought lists are full of spam traps, role addresses, and people who never opted in. They will burn down your sender reputation in days, not weeks. The cost of recovery (a new domain, a new IP pool, weeks of warmup) far exceeds whatever you paid for the list.
How 3AVA Mail helps
Section titled “How 3AVA Mail helps”- Auto-suppression of hard bounces, complaints, unsubscribes
- Verification at import + on-demand
- Per-list metrics in the dashboard so you can spot a degrading list before it damages domain reputation
- Auto-pause on campaigns that breach complaint or bounce thresholds
The platform protects you from the most common failure modes — but only on lists you’ve imported correctly in the first place.