Compliance FAQ

Bounces

1. Why are your emails getting bounced?

Emails may bounce due to invalid email addresses, full mailboxes, blacklisted sender IPs/domains, missing SPF/DKIM records, large attachments, suspicious content, or recipient server issues. Cleaning your contact lists and ensuring proper email setup can help reduce bounce rates.

To ﬁnd the bounce reason in Zoho Campaigns:

1. Go to Campaigns.

2. Open the relevant email campaign.

3. Click on the Reports tab.

4. Under Recipient Activity, select Bounced contacts.

5. Hover over or click on each bounced email to view the speciﬁc bounce reason (e.g., invalid address, mailbox full, blocked).

This shows you the bounce reason in Zoho Campaigns.

2. What is the bounce rate threshold limit?

The bounce threshold limit in Zoho Campaigns is 5%.

If your campaign exceeds the bounce threshold, it will be automatically stopped by our system. You’ll receive a notiﬁcation email, allowing you to clean your inactive contacts before restarting the campaign.

Your campaign may be cancelled if the bounce threshold limit is exceeded. A high bounce rate can negatively affect your domain reputation, which in turn will impact future email deliverability.

Zoho Campaigns may stop your campaign if you exceed plan limits, encounter technical errors, or if the campaign undergoes a manual review by Zoho’s compliance team. Check the notiﬁcations or contact support@zohocampaigns.com for more details.

Campaigns that were cancelled due to a high bounce rate will automatically restart within 24 hours. Alternatively, we can restart the campaign manually after validating and removing inactive contacts in coordination with the compliance team.

3. How do you download bounced contacts?

To download bounced contacts:

1. Go to Contacts → All Contacts.

2. Under Contact Status, select Bounced Contacts.

3. Select all of the contacts that match the current view.

4. Click More Actions → Export.

This downloads bounced contacts.

To export soft bounced contacts:

1. Go to Reports → Sent Campaigns.

2. Click Bounces and Auto Replies → Soft Bounce.

3. Select all of the contacts.

4. Click Export.

This exports bounced contacts.

On the other hand, if valid contacts are mistakenly marked as bounced, we can revert them to active status after validating the proof of communication. Contact us at support@zohocampaigns.com with the necessary information.

4. Why is a valid email address getting bounced?

A valid email address may bounce due to temporary server issues, a full mailbox, strict spam ﬁlters, or incorrect domain settings (e.g., SPF/DKIM). Even valid addresses can bounce if the recipient server rejects bulk emails or if Zoho’s IP is temporarily blocked.

Note: If a soft bounce occurs, we’ll attempt to resend the campaign seven more times. If it continues to fail, it will eventually be considered a hard bounce.

High bounce rates often result from outdated or incorrect email lists, poor sender reputation, or spam-triggering content. Invalid email addresses, lack of recipient engagement, and technical issues like server blocks also contribute. Regular list cleaning, proper authentication, and targeted content can reduce bounce rates.

5. Will your Zoho Campaigns organization be blocked due to high bounce rates?

If your bounce rate remains consistently high, Zoho Campaigns may block your organization, which affects email deliverability and your sender reputation.

If your Zoho Campaigns organization is put on hold or blocked, you’ll receive a notiﬁcation email with instructions to provide subscriber sources, conﬁrm that all contacts have opted in, and share the sign-up form URL. After reviewing these details, we’ll work with the email deliverability team to address the issue.

6. What are the impacts of a high bounce rate and how to avoid it?

A high bounce rate harms your sender reputation, reduces email deliverability, and can lead to account restrictions or suspension. It indicates poor list quality, which can result in your emails being ﬂagged as spam by ISPs.

To avoid a high bounce rate:

Use double opt-in for valid subscribers.
Avoid outdated or purchased lists.
Regularly clean your list to remove invalid or inactive emails.
Remove hard bounces as soon as possible.

Also, emailing old contacts can cause a high bounce rate because their addresses may be outdated or inactive. This can affect deliverability, harm your sender reputation, and potentially lead to Zoho Campaigns account restrictions. Regularly update and verify your list to avoid issues and maintain healthy email campaign performance.

7. Why are Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail contacts getting soft-bounced?

Outlook or Hotmail contacts may experience soft bounces due to temporary issues such as full inboxes, server delays, or email ﬁlters delaying delivery. Occasionally, Outlook’s system may temporarily block emails to protect users from suspicious activity. These bounces usually resolve automatically when conditions improve.

Similarly, Yahoo or AOL contacts may experience soft bounces due to temporary issues like full inboxes, server delays, or email ﬁlters delaying delivery. Sometimes, Yahoo’s system temporarily blocks emails to protect users from suspicious activity. These bounces typically resolve automatically once the issue is resolved.

8. How are bounces tracked and updated in the report?

In Zoho Campaigns, bounces are tracked by monitoring the email delivery status returned by recipient servers. When an email can’t be delivered, Zoho logs it as a bounce—either hard (permanent failure) or soft (temporary failure). These bounce details are automatically updated in your campaign reports, helping you analyze and clean your list. Repeated soft bounces may eventually be treated as hard bounces to protect deliverability. This automated handling ensures that your future campaigns are sent only to valid and reachable email addresses.

9. Can you delete soft- and hard-bounced contacts?

Yes. Soft-bounced contacts remain active in Zoho Campaigns, so they can be deleted.

But, once a contact hard bounces, it will automatically be removed from your active contacts and added to the bounced contacts list to ensure it isn't added again.

You will not be able to edit the email address of hard-bounced contacts. You also cannot update the field values of such contacts.

Note: Bounced contacts will not count towards your subscription limit.

10. Will your emails bounce if your domain is not authenticated?

Not necessarily, but failing to authenticate your domain (using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) increases the chance that your emails may be marked as spam or rejected by recipient servers. This can lead to higher bounce rates and poor deliverability. Domain authentication builds trust and improves successful email delivery. Without authentication, mailbox providers may treat your emails with suspicion or apply stricter filtering. Over time, this can negatively impact your sender reputation and inbox placement. Authenticating your domain also helps protect it from spoofing and unauthorized use.

Contacts

1. Should you clean your list before sending campaigns?

Yes, it’s always advisable to clean your mailing list at regular intervals before sending campaigns. Sending emails to inactive contacts can lead to deliverability issues, such as being marked as spam, receiving abuse complaints, and high bounce rates.

If you're using an online list cleaning service, you can export all contacts from Zoho Campaigns. If you export the contacts as a password-protected file, the password is the ﬁrst four digits of your login email address and the last four digits of your Zoho user ID.

Use an online list cleaning service to clean your contacts. Import inactive/invalid contacts to the Do-Not-Mail list. Share the overall report provided by the list cleaning service with us (support@zohocampaigns.com) for further checking.

Zoho doesn’t have an in-house list cleaning tool and cannot endorse speciﬁc services. You can select a list cleaning service based on online reviews.

2. Why should you import inactive email addresses to the unsubscribed contacts?

Inactive email addresses are typically not engaging with your campaigns and may include spam traps. To maintain good deliverability, it’s important to move these contacts to the Unsubscribe list regularly. Continuing to send emails to inactive contacts can increase bounce rates and spam complaints. Removing them helps protect your sender reputation and ensures that your campaigns are focused on contacts who are more likely to engage.

Abuse complaints and compliance in Zoho Campaigns

1. What does an abuse complaint mean?

In marketing emails, abuse complaints occur when recipients mark your email as spam or report it to their email provider. High abuse complaints harm your sender reputation, reduce deliverability, and may result in account warnings or suspension.

Minimizing complaints requires relevant content, clear opt-out options, and targeting engaged subscribers.

Abuse complaints may arise for reasons such as:

Sending emails to people who didn’t opt-in.
Irrelevant or excessive content.
Hidden or diﬃcult-to-ﬁnd unsubscribe options.
Sending emails too frequently.
Misleading subject lines or sender information.
Poor list hygiene, with outdated or purchased contacts.

Abuse complaints are raised when recipients click the Report Spam button in their email client (e.g., Gmail, Outlook). This action notiﬁes the email provider that the message is unwanted, which can negatively impact your sender reputation and email deliverability.

You can ﬁnd spam markings in your campaign report under "Marked spam." However, we don't have a provision to display direct abuse complaints in your campaign report.

Due to privacy and security reasons, we don't provide a list of recipients who raised abuse complaints.

2. What is the threshold limit for complaints?

In Zoho Campaigns, the threshold for abuse complaints is 0.1% of your total sent emails.

If your campaign exceeds the threshold limit, it will be automatically canceled or stopped by our system.

Sending emails to old or inactive contacts may result in abuse complaints. Removing old or inactive contacts on a regular basis is always recommended.

Zoho Campaigns does not disclose the recipients who have raised abuse complaints. We recommend removing contacts who have not consented to receive emails from you or have not engaged with your campaigns.

3. Why are you receiving abuse complaint warning emails?

If your recipients raise abuse complaints, our automated system will send you a warning email to ensure that you’re following proper contact management and email sending practices.

4. What should you do when you receive an account block notification email due to abuse complaints?

Kindly respond to the clarification questions in the notification email so that we can verify your contact management practices and assist you further.

5. Does sending emails to non-opt-in contacts result in abuse complaints?

Yes. Sending campaigns to contacts who have not given consent to receive emails from you increases the likelihood of receiving abuse complaints.

6. Can you find out how many abuse complaints you’ve received?

You cannot view the speciﬁc contacts who have raised abuse complaints in Zoho Campaigns.

7. Can recipients find Zoho’s abuse email address in the email campaigns you send?

Yes. All emails sent from Zoho Campaigns will include our abuse email address in the header, allowing recipients to report unsolicited emails directly to us.

8. How can you reduce abuse complaints?

High abuse complaints can damage your sender reputation, reduce email deliverability, and increase the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam. This can lead to blacklisting by ISPs, suspension from platforms like Zoho Campaigns, and lower engagement rates.

A direct abuse complaint occurs when a recipient manually reports your email as spam, typically by clicking the Report Spam or Mark as Junk button in their email client.

You need to ensure you are:

Following proper contact management practices, such as targeting engaged, opt-in contacts and maintaining a clean list, will help reduce abuse complaints.
Making the unsubscribe link visible and easy to ﬁnd helps reduce abuse complaints. When recipients can easily opt out, they’re less likely to mark your email as spam.
Performing topic management allows recipients to choose their preferences, so instead of unsubscribing, they can select the types of marketing emails they want to receive, which reduces the likelihood of abuse complaints.
Sending consent emails (like conﬁrmation or re-engagement emails) helps ensure that recipients want your messages, cleans your list of disengaged contacts, and reduces the likelihood of abuse complaints. In Zoho Campaigns, it is mandatory to obtain consent from your contacts before sending email campaigns to them.
Ultimately, to avoid having your Zoho Campaigns organization blocked due to abuse complaints, we strongly suggest you remove old, non-opt-in, and inactive contacts and follow best practices for contact management, sending emails only to opt-in and active contacts.

9. Are anti-spam services strict regarding abuse complaints?

Anti-spam services are very strict about abuse complaints. Even a small percentage of complaints can trigger scrutiny. Frequent complaints can lead to blacklisting, email blocking, or permanent damage to your sender reputation.

Note: When recipients report abuse to their Email Service Providers (ESP) (i.e., Zoho Campaigns), it can lower your sender reputation, reduce email deliverability, and potentially lead to account suspension or restrictions to protect users from unsolicited emails.

Spam Trap

1. What do spam trap hits mean? What causes spam trap hits? Can you use analytics to view these hits?

Spam traps are used to identify spammers. They look like regular email addresses but don’t respond to emails or sign up for lists. When they receive an email, the sender is ﬂagged as a spammer.

High spam trap hits usually indicate that your email list contains outdated, purchased, or scraped addresses. Spam traps detect non-consensual or careless list-building practices. To reduce these hits, clean your list regularly, use conﬁrmed opt-ins, avoid buying lists, and remove inactive contacts.

Spam trap hit counts are not included in Zoho Campaigns reports. Zoho Campaigns does not provide a list of spam trap hit contacts.

High spam trap hits will negatively impact your domain reputation and may lead to blacklisting. Spam trap hits harm your sender reputation, increase bounce rates, lower deliverability, and may lead to blacklisting or account suspension by email platforms.

2. How strict are anti-spam services against spam trap hits? What should you do if you receive warning emails and account block notification due to spam traps?

Anti-spam services are extremely strict about spam trap hits. Even a single hit can trigger warnings, and multiple hits can lead to blacklisting or account suspension.

Anti-spam services don't share spam trap email addresses to preserve their effectiveness. If these addresses were made public, spammers could avoid them, which would defeat the purpose. Keeping them conﬁdential helps catch negligent or malicious senders, maintaining the health of the overall email ecosystem.

You will receive a warning email if your emails are being sent to spam trap addresses. This typically happens due to outdated, purchased, or scraped contacts. We recommend cleaning your list to protect your sender reputation.

If you receive an account block notification email due to high spam trap hits, we request that you respond to the clariﬁcation questions in the notiﬁcation email, and we’ll check your contact management practices and offer suggestions to proceed further.

Once your account is unblocked, you shouldn't immediately reactivate inactive contacts that were moved to unsubscribed status and continue sending campaigns. It’s recommended to review your email list thoroughly and engage only those who have conﬁrmed their interest before reactivating such contacts.

3. What are the different ways to reduce spam trap hits?

Here are some of the ways to reduce spam trap hits for your campaigns:

List cleaning tools cannot completely remove spam trap hit contacts. To reduce spam trap hits, remove contacts who haven't engaged with your campaigns in 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years.
Spam trap contacts don’t engage with your campaigns, so removing old, inactive, or non-opt-in contacts reduces the risk of sending emails to spam traps.
Following proper contact management practices, such as regularly cleaning your list and using conﬁrmed opt-ins, will help reduce spam trap hits.
The double opt-in process helps reduce spam trap hits by ensuring only genuine, engaged subscribers are added to your list, reducing the risk of sending emails to spam traps.
Removing old or inactive contacts helps reduce spam trap hits because these contacts may include outdated or abandoned email addresses that have turned into spam traps. Keeping your list clean prevents sending emails to these traps, which protects your sender reputation, improves deliverability, and helps avoid penalties or account suspensions.
You can send re-engagement emails to old or inactive contacts to gauge their interest in receiving further emails. You should then send future emails only to the contacts who express interest. If no response is received after one or two follow-up re-engagement emails, you should remove those contacts from your account.

4. Why aren’t spam trap contacts categorized as bounced or invalid?

Spam trap contacts still have an active inbox. Because they have a valid email box, they won’t be flagged as bounced or invalid contacts. However, these addresses are designed specifically to identify senders with poor list hygiene. Sending emails to spam traps can severely damage your sender reputation. This is why regular list cleaning and engagement-based segmentation are critical for maintaining good deliverability.

5. Why is your Zoho Campaigns organization placed on hold when you receive high spam trap hits?

Your Zoho Campaigns organization is placed on hold after high spam trap hits to protect the reputation of its email sending network. Spam trap hits indicate poor list hygiene or potential spam practices. The hold helps prevent further damage while you clean your list and resolve the issues before resuming email campaign.

6. Can you purchase a dedicated IP address to avoid an account block due to high spam trap hits?

Purchasing a dedicated IP address does not prevent account blocks due to high spam trap hits. Spam trap hits reﬂect poor list quality and sending practices, which impact your sender reputation regardless of IP type. Maintaining a clean list and following best practices is key to avoiding blocks, even with a dedicated IP.

Our automated system monitors the performance of your campaigns and will send a warning email if spam trap hits are high.

7. How can your emails end up being delivered to spam trap contacts?

Email Service Providers and anti-spam organizations use spam traps to identify senders who are not following best practices or are sending unsolicited emails. This is how emails can end up being "delivered" to these contacts. Spam traps are designed to catch spammers and can severely damage the sender's reputation and email deliverability.

An email address is considered a spam trap when it’s used by an ESP or anti- spam organization to identify senders engaged in poor email list hygiene. These addresses are either newly created and never used by a real person (pristine spam traps) or recycled from old, abandoned addresses that have been repurposed (recycled spam traps). Sending emails to these traps indicates unethical or careless email acquisition methods, such as scraping websites, buying lists, or not properly managing list hygiene.

Email addresses with misspelled domain names are considered a type of spam trap, speciﬁcally known as typo spam traps. It’s diﬃcult for email senders to identify spam trap email addresses because they’re designed to appear as normal, valid email addresses.

When ESPs detect emails sent to spam traps, they take actions that negatively impact the sender's reputation and deliverability. These actions include ﬂagging the sender's IP address and domain as a source of spam, potentially leading to email blocking and reduced inbox placement for legitimate emails. Additionally, hitting spam traps can damage your sender reputation, causing increased bounce rates and potentially landing the sender on email blacklists.

Google Postmaster

1. Does Gmail classify emails based on Google Postmaster Tool reports?

Yes, Gmail uses the data from Google Postmaster Tool to classify emails. If your domain or IP reputation is poor, your emails are more likely to be ﬁltered into spam.

Gmail contacts may experience soft bounces due to temporary issues such as full inboxes, server delays, or Gmail’s spam ﬁlters delaying email delivery. Sometimes, Gmail’s system temporarily blocks emails to protect users from suspicious activity. These bounces usually resolve automatically when conditions improve.

2. Why have you received a warning email saying your domain reputation was affected in Gmail?

Our automated system checks your domain reputation and notiﬁes us if it’s affected. If your domain reputation is impacted, we’ll send you a warning email.

You can add your domain to tools like Google Postmaster and review the dates when your domain reputation was affected. You can then cross-check campaign reports for the speciﬁc dates to identify what might have caused the decline.

3. Why should you add your domain to Google Postmaster?

By adding your domain to Google Postmaster, you can easily monitor the status of your domain reputation. This allows you to identify and resolve any issues that could impact your email deliverability, especially with Gmail recipients.

You can also add multiple domains to Google Postmaster to monitor the reputation of each one separately.

The Google Postmaster tool report only reﬂects emails sent to Gmail and Google domain recipients. You can review reports for the past 7, 30, 60, 90, or 120 days in Google Postmaster.

If your domain reputation is low or bad in Google Postmaster, your emails are more likely to be classiﬁed as spam by Gmail.

4. How do you enable access to Zoho Campaigns' email address in Google Postmaster?

To grant access, follow these steps:

Click the icon next to your veriﬁed domain in Google Postmaster.
Select Manage users. Ensure that you have admin privileges in Google Postmaster. If you don’t have admin access, you won’t find the Manage users option.
Click the + icon at the bottom-right.
Add our email address (zohocampaignsuser@gmail.com) and let us know by contacting us at support@zohocampaigns.com so we can check further.

5. What happens if low domain and IP reputations plus a high spam rate are present in Google Postmaster?

When your domain reputation is low or bad in Google Postmaster, your emails are more likely to land in Gmail’s spam folder, signiﬁcantly impacting deliverability to Gmail recipients.

If your IP reputation is low or bad in Google Postmaster, your emails are more likely to land in spam folders, even for recipients using Gmail or other email services that use similar reputation metrics.

A high spam rate in Google Postmaster can indicate one of two things; a signiﬁcant percentage of your emails sent to Gmail accounts are marked as spam automatically, or they’re reported as spam by recipients. This can negatively affect your sender reputation and email deliverability.

Improving your domain reputation in Google Postmaster can signiﬁcantly improve your email deliverability because Gmail uses this tool to classify emails as either legitimate or spam.

6. What impact can Google Postmaster have on your Zoho Campaigns organization?

Your Zoho Campaigns organization can be placed on hold due to domain reputation issues in Google Postmaster. If that happens, follow the corrective suggestions provided in the notiﬁcation email that you'll receive.

After making the necessary improvements, let us know by emailing us at support@zohocampaigns.com so we can review and assist in lifting the hold. The account hold is a preventive measure to stop further negative impact while corrective actions are taken.

7. How do you add your domain and verify it in Google Postmaster?

To add your domain, log into your Google Postmaster account and click the + icon at the bottom. You need to verify your domain using TXT records.

You can check whether the correct TXT records are added to your domain DNS settings. If they’re properly conﬁgured, click the Verify button to check the veriﬁcation status.

8. If your domain reputation is affected in Google Postmaster, will it affect the deliverability of emails sent to other domains?

No. If your domain reputation is low in Google Postmaster, it will only affect emails sent to Gmail and Google domain contacts. However, maintaining a poor reputation could have wider consequences, especially if other ESPs start to follow similar metrics.

9. What are some measures to take to ensure good domain reputation in Google Postmaster?

Some of the steps you can take include:

Following best email sending practices and ensuring proper contact management. This includes sending to opt-in contacts, removing inactive addresses, and adhering to engagement best practices.
Sending emails to non-opt-in or inactive contacts is considered poor contact management and can negatively impact your domain reputation in Google Postmaster.
Warming up your sender domain because it can help improve your domain reputation. This involves gradually increasing the volume of emails sent over time to build a positive reputation with ISPs and email recipients.

10. What should you do when your IP's reputation is low in Google Postmaster?

We ask that you contact our support team by sharing a screenshot of your IP reputation report or providing access to our email address to allow us to review the situation. Then, contact our support team at support@zohocampaigns.com so we can assist you further.