ZapBounce and Woodpecker
Woodpecker includes bounce protection that stops sending to an address once it has failed. That is a sensible safety net and it operates after the first bounce.
The bounce that triggers it has already been counted against your sending domain, which is the difference between a safety net and prevention.
Protection starts after the first failure
A bounce shield needs a bounce to shield you from. The first send to a dead address goes out, fails, and is recorded by the receiving server before the protection engages.
On a list where a fifth of the addresses are dead, that means a fifth of your first send is the damage, and the shield prevents the second occurrence rather than the first.
Woodpecker's deduplication across campaigns helps with a related problem, stopping the same prospect being contacted twice by two reps, and it does nothing about an address that never existed.
How the data moves
Verify before the prospect list is imported
The first send is what the receiving servers judge. Everything Woodpecker does afterwards is containment.
Use a snippet field for the verdict
Woodpecker snippets are per-prospect fields, and a verdict snippet lets a condition read it.
Keep unresolvable addresses in a separate campaign
So the bounce shield engages on a campaign you were prepared to risk rather than your main one.
Cross-check against the bounce list after a send
Addresses Woodpecker bounced that we marked valid are worth looking at, because that comparison tells you something about both checks.
Setting it up
- Verify the prospect file before importing into Woodpecker.
- Map the verdict into a snippet field during import.
- Import only confirmed addresses into your main campaign.
- Run catch-all addresses as a separate campaign with its own domains.
- After the first send, compare Woodpecker's bounce list against the verdicts you imported.
- Re-verify any prospect list older than a month before a new campaign.
Woodpecker: common questions
Does Woodpecker's bounce protection replace verification?
No. It stops the second send to an address that already failed. The first failure is the one the receiving server counts.
What should I do with disagreements?
Where Woodpecker bounced an address we marked valid, look at the smtp_code we recorded. That comparison is informative about both checks.
Where do the unconfirmable addresses belong?
A separate campaign on separate domains, so the shield engages where you expected it to.
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