Pardot Hard Bounced vs Opted Out vs Do Not Email: A Guide
Pardot Hard Bounced vs Opted Out vs Do Not Email: A Guide
Pardot Hard Bounced • Email Deliverability
This blog was written before Pardot was renamed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. You can read more about the name change and what it means here.
There are a handful of reasons we may not be able to email prospects in Pardot. The three most common are when a prospect is marked with either ‘Opted Out’, ‘Do Not Email’, or the dreaded ‘Pardot Hard Bounced’.
When we send a marketing email from Pardot there is always a risk prospects may unsubscribe and therefore be classed as ‘Email Opt Out’. If this is the case, they will be suppressed from receiving our email content. On the other hand, ‘Do Not Email’ prospects are those that have been suppressed from receiving emails despite being on a recipient list.
It’s also key to note that if an email is sent from Pardot which has less than 90% deliverability rate, your account will be placed under surveillance as this is an indicator of potential reputation damage! If the email delivery rate is below 90% three times, Pardot will reach out and potentially suspend future email sends.
Now, this can sound confusing (don’t worry you’re not alone), but the following blog has been written to help clear things up.
Opted Out vs Do Not Email vs Hard Bounced
Opted Out
‘Opting out’ of marketing communications is completely controlled by the prospect. This can be done a number of ways including:
- Clicking an unsubscribe link in a Pardot email or via the email preference page.
- Reporting an email as spam.
- Being manually imported as ‘Opted Out’.
- A user has manually opted out the prospect in Pardot.
Despite being suppressed from most emails from Pardot, Autoresponders and Operational Emails are exempt.
Some of you may have heard that when prospects ‘Opt Out’, this is considered a negative metric… but we are here to tell you that this is a myth and explain why.
The reason we have the unsubscribe option is to filter out recipients who do not want to receive our emails. This is not a bad thing! In fact, once we refine the prospects that want to engage with our brand, we will then only be sending relevant content and receive better reporting metrics – so it’s a win-win!
As a result, we want to make the unsubscribe button as easily accessible as possible. By making it easy to spot (our best advice is the header), it reduces the risk of our emails being marked as “spam” in the future.
Top Tip: If you would like to prompt prospects to opt back into receiving marketing communications after previously opting out, Pardot now has an ‘Automated Resubscribe’ feature. This useful feature gives the user a choice to send themself a resubscribe autoresponder email after filling in a form on the website.
Read more about How to Set up the Pardot Resubscribe Process.
Do Not Email
Alternatively, when a prospect has been marked as ‘Do Not Email’, they have been suppressed from ALL email types in Pardot. As a result, they will not receive future emails through Pardot, this includes autoresponders or operational emails!
Prospects can be marked as ‘Do Not Email’ if their email address has:
- Hard bounced once or had five soft bounces
- Has been imported as “opted out”
- Has been opted out in Salesforce
- Has been manually opted out
Now we have established the difference between Do Not Email and Opted Out, we can delve into Prospects that have ‘Hard Bounced’ and why this may be an issue in the future for ‘Do Not Email’ prospects.
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