Reducing your bounce rate in Zoho Campaigns

Written for small businesses already running the Zoho suite.

Zoho Campaigns
Their stated thresholdZoho's guidance points at keeping bounce rates low, and their review team is explicit that purchased lists are not permitted.
What happens if you cross itZoho reviews campaigns before sending on new accounts and can decline to release them. They ask for the list's source, and a purchased list is refused rather than throttled.
Where the bounce data livesReports, then the campaign, with hard and soft bounces separated. Contacts filtered by status shows bounced contacts across the account.
How bounces are classifiedZoho Campaigns marks hard-bounced contacts as bounced and stops sending. Repeated soft bounces move a contact to the same status.

Bringing the rate down

Each step is an action inside Zoho Campaigns, in the order worth taking them.

  1. Answer the campaign review properly

    Zoho asks how you collected the list before releasing a campaign on a new account. A clear answer moves faster than a support escalation.

  2. Check whether contacts came through the CRM sync

    Zoho CRM leads sync into Campaigns. An address entered by a salesperson in a hurry becomes a marketing contact without ever passing a form.

  3. Separate CRM-sourced contacts from form signups

    They have very different bounce profiles, and mixing them in one campaign hides which is responsible.

  4. Use double opt-in on signup forms

    Zoho supports it per form and it removes the typo problem at source.

  5. Verify before importing into a new account

    The first campaign is reviewed by a person, and a clean list with a documented source is the fastest route through that review.

The mistake people make here

A bounce report mixes two causes that need opposite responses: addresses that do not exist, and receivers refusing mail they could have delivered. The first is fixed by checking the list. The second is a sending problem and no amount of cleaning will move it.

Questions people ask

Why is my Zoho campaign awaiting approval?

Zoho reviews campaigns on new accounts and after large imports. They ask how you collected the list, and the answer decides whether it is released.

Does Zoho allow purchased lists?

No. Their policy is explicit, and their review exists to catch them. A clean purchased list is still a purchased list.

How do CRM-sourced contacts affect bounce rates?

They bounce more than form signups, because a salesperson typing an address from a business card has no validation step behind them.

Check the list before the next send

100 free checks a month, no card, and the addresses nobody can resolve come back labeled rather than guessed at.