ZapBounce and Mailshake
Mailshake watches bounce rates and pauses campaigns that cross its thresholds. That protects your sending account and it does so mid-sequence, which has its own cost.
A campaign paused after step one leaves every prospect with a single cold email and no follow-up, which is the worst possible state for a sequence to stop in.
An automatic pause strands a sequence at step one
Cold sequences do most of their work in the follow-ups. A campaign that sends step one to two thousand prospects then pauses has spent the introduction and captured none of the value.
Restarting is not neutral either. Prospects who received step one weeks ago are now getting step two out of context, and the sequence reads as disjointed.
Mailshake's pause is the right behavior for protecting the account. Avoiding the trigger is the only way to avoid the cost.
How the data moves
Verify before the campaign is created
The bounce rate that triggers a pause is set by the first send. Nothing after that helps.
Import only confirmed addresses
Mailshake campaigns are a list plus a sequence. Keeping the list confirmed is what keeps the sequence running to completion.
Run catch-alls as a separate campaign
If that campaign trips the pause, it pauses alone rather than taking your main sequence with it.
Watch the rate in the first hours
The pause threshold is reached early if the list is bad. The first hundred sends tell you what the next two thousand will do.
Setting it up
- Verify the prospect list before creating the Mailshake campaign.
- Import confirmed addresses into the main campaign.
- Create a separate campaign for catch-all addresses so a pause is contained.
- Exclude unresolved addresses entirely from the first run.
- Watch the bounce rate over the first hundred sends rather than waiting for a daily summary.
- Re-verify any list that has been sitting unused for more than a month.
Mailshake: common questions
What bounce rate pauses a Mailshake campaign?
Check the current threshold in your own account, since it changes. The point is that it exists and a stale list reaches it on the first send.
Can I resume a paused campaign?
You can, and prospects who received step one weeks earlier now get step two out of context. Prevention is the better route.
Should catch-alls go in the main campaign?
No. A separate campaign means a pause is contained to the experiment rather than stopping your main sequence.
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