What happens to emails sent to love.com now that the domain is sold?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum warns against sending emails to purchased lists or very old lists without verifying their accuracy. Domains can change hands, and previously valid addresses can become invalid, leading to bounces and potential spam complaints.
Email marketer from SuperOffice emphasizes the importance of cleaning your email lists regularly to remove invalid or inactive email addresses. This includes addresses from domains that may have been sold or abandoned, as sending to these addresses hurts your reputation.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that after a domain is sold, emails sent to that domain will typically bounce back to the sender, generating a non-delivery report (NDR).
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign shares that sending emails to invalid addresses due to domain changes or sales negatively impacts your domain reputation. Maintaining a clean and engaged email list is vital for protecting your sender reputation.
Email marketer from Constant Contact highlights that maintaining a clean email list is essential for deliverability. Sending emails to outdated addresses or domains that no longer exist (because they were sold) can lead to high bounce rates and damage your sender reputation.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that love.com bounces from Google with a '550 5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist' error.
Email marketer from EmailOctopus blog shares that if a domain expires or is sold, emails sent to addresses at that domain will likely bounce, and continuing to send emails to these addresses can negatively impact your sender reputation.
Email marketer from Sender explains that bounced emails are a key indicator of email list health. A high bounce rate can significantly damage your sender reputation, leading to deliverability issues. They recommend immediately removing hard bounces from your list.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that bounced emails, including those resulting from invalid or non-existent domains, should be handled carefully. Continuously sending to these addresses can harm your sender reputation and deliverability. Cleaning your email list is crucial.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Wordtothewise.com explains that once a domain is no longer active, emails sent to that domain are likely to bounce. Senders need to ensure they have processes to handle bounces so they are not negatively impacting their sender reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks confirms that love.com emails are dead and will write a blog post about it.
Expert from Spamresource.com recommends ensuring you have a robust process for monitoring for bounces and removing invalid email addresses from your list. When a domain expires, any mail sent to the old domain may be rejected or could even be received and processed by spammers.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from SparkPost states that emails sent to inactive or invalid domains will result in bounces. Managing these bounces and suppressing those addresses is critical for maintaining good deliverability. Continuously sending to them can cause blacklisting.
Documentation from DigitalOcean defines hard bounces as permanent delivery failures, often due to invalid email addresses or non-existent domains. Emails sent to love.com after domain sale would likely result in hard bounces. These should be removed from your list immediately.
Documentation from RFC Editor explains that the SMTP protocol uses reply codes to indicate the outcome of a mail transaction. A 5xx error code (e.g., 550) typically indicates a permanent failure, meaning the email address is invalid or the domain no longer exists, and the mail should not be retried.
Documentation from Microsoft explains that if you receive a Non-Delivery Report (NDR) for an email you sent, it means the message could not be delivered. This can occur if the email address is no longer valid because the domain has been sold or is defunct.
Documentation from Google explains that if an email address is no longer valid (e.g., the domain is sold), the sender will receive a bounce message indicating the email could not be delivered.