How We Reduced Bounce Rates by 80% (New Campaign) and 50% (Old Campaign) in 3 Weeks
The Background
Even a highly successful campaign can go stale if you use it for too long.
Reason: Using the same sequence for an extended period can trigger mail servers to flag your emails as spam, leading to increased bounce rates and reduced deliverability.
This is exactly what happened to us when we noticed two critical warning signs:
The Warning Signs
- We started receiving graylisting error messages from mail servers
- Our long-running SEO outreach campaign’s bounce rate jumped to 10%
Why This Was Surprising:
Previously this same campaign had done wonderfully in terms of:
- ✓ Positive responses from prospects
- ✓ Earning high-quality backlinks for our client
This taught us that even successful campaigns can become stale over time and trigger spam filters.
Our Testing Approach: Two Campaigns
Instead of just fixing the problem, we decided to run a comprehensive test by applying our improvements to two separate campaigns simultaneously:
Already damaged with 10% bounce rate. Large contact list, sender reputation at risk.
Fresh start with clean slate. New legal niche targeting, all improvements from day one.
Why test on both? We wanted to know if our improvements could:
- ✓ Recover a damaged campaign with poor sender reputation
- ✓ Prevent deliverability issues on fresh campaigns
The results exceeded our expectations on both fronts.
Important Context: This was particularly surprising because this same campaign had previously performed exceptionally well, earning positive responses and securing high-quality backlinks for our clients.
7 Strategic Changes That Fixed Everything
After studying the error codes and consulting with Mailshake’s support team, we implemented seven critical changes to our cold email strategy.
Change #1: Enhanced Personalization
We significantly increased the personalization in our email sequences:
- First Name of recipient (already implemented)
- Company Name mentioned contextually (NEW)
- Industry-specific references tailored to each prospect
Note: We’re continuously researching additional personalization opportunities to further improve engagement.
Change #2: Shortened Email Sequence
We reduced our sequence from 4 emails to 3 emails.
Why this matters: Sending 4 follow-ups is excessive, especially when you’re not analyzing recipient engagement after each email. Our traditional sequence sent follow-ups regardless of whether recipients opened, clicked, or ignored previous messages.
Future improvement: We’re planning to implement action-based sequencing (see “Ideas for the Future” section below).
Change #3: Optimized Subject Lines
We completely overhauled our subject line strategy based on a critical insight:
The 80/20 Rule for Cold Emails: Spend 80% of your time crafting subject lines and only 20% on the email body. Your subject line, sender name, and profile photo are the first three things recipients see—make them count!
Subject Line Optimization Process
Resources We Used:
- CoSchedule’s Email Headline Analyzer
- Try the tool and aim for scores of 60-70+
- Follow the guidelines provided (e.g., avoid spammy words like “FREE”)
- Study the Power Words Guide by CoSchedule
- Add Emoticons
- Use emoticons like 🤩, ✅, 🤔, 😂, 👏🏻 to make emails more prominent
- ALERT: Some email providers remove emoticons, so use them only at the very start or end of subject lines
Subject Line Examples for Legal Niche
Change #4: Simplified Email Content
We reduced the length of our outreach pitch by approximately 50% (note: this means the overall pitch template was shortened by half, not that we manually reduced each individual email’s length). We achieved this through several tactics:
- Changing key phrases for freshness
- Removing repetitive content
- Shortening lengthy sections
- Moving non-essential items from email body to signature
- Adding Wit to Our Emails: We incorporated humor relevant to each niche
- For legal niche: Found jokes commonly used about lawyers (handled with care to poke fun at ourselves, not recipients)
- Referenced resources like Charm Offensive’s Email Templates by Jon Buchan for inspiration
Change #5: Dramatically Reduced Links
We cut our link count from 5 links to just 2 links.
Previous approach: Twitter, LinkedIn, case study, podcast, and website links
New approach: Maximum of 2 carefully selected, relevant links
Critical Warning: Too many links can trigger spam filters, even when you’re providing valuable content and legitimate outreach.
Change #6: Streamlined Email Signature
We completely redesigned our signature to be:
- Shorter and more scannable
- Simplified with essential information only
- Easier to read on mobile devices
Change #7: Expanded to New Industry Niches
We began prospecting in the legal industry niche—still relevant to our client’s broader marketing niche—to:
- Test our improved campaign with fresh audiences
- Avoid reputation damage from overused sequences
- Gather data on campaign performance across different verticals
- Use dual email verification to ensure maximum deliverability:
- Hunter.io for initial verification
- Voila Norbert (now part of Kaspr) for double-checking
- Mailshake’s built-in verification as final check
Bonus Enhancement: Dual Email Verification
We implemented a two-tool verification strategy:
- Hunter.io email verification (previously used)
- Mailshake’s Viola Norbert email verification (NEW addition)
This redundant verification system significantly improved email accuracy and reduced hard bounces.
Results
We tested our 7 strategic changes on both campaigns simultaneously. Here’s what happened:
Campaign #1: Recovering a Damaged Sender Reputation
This was the campaign that triggered our investigation—the one suffering from a 10% bounce rate. We were skeptical about salvaging it because:
- Extensive contact list already reached (sender reputation damaged)
- High bounce rates had likely flagged us with mail servers
- We expected a long, slow recovery—if recovery was even possible
The Surprise: Even with this damaged campaign, the bounce rate dropped from 10% to 5% in just 2-3 weeks—much faster than we anticipated!
Key Insight: This proves that even campaigns with damaged sender reputations can be recovered with the right strategic changes. A 50% reduction in bounce rate for a “stale” campaign is remarkable.
Campaign #2: Fresh Start with All Improvements
We launched a brand new campaign targeting the legal niche with all 7 improvements implemented from day one. The changes included:
- All new leads (no overlap with old campaign)
- Same core pitch with enhanced personalization
- Legal industry-specific targeting
Result: The new campaign achieved a 2% bounce rate within the first few weeks and maintained it consistently.
This represents an 80% improvement compared to the old campaign’s original 10% bounce rate—proving that starting fresh with these improvements yields even better results than recovery alone.
Ideas for the Near Future
Idea #1: Better Lead Prospecting
Current Challenges:
- Finding quality leads is time-intensive
- Low conversion from raw Ahrefs data to ready-for-outreach leads
- Scarcity of “hot leads” (sites with high DR, quality content, no pay-for-link model)
Goals: Research and implement faster, more efficient prospecting methods to:
- Further reduce bounce rates
- Increase response rates through better targeting
- Secure higher quality backlinks
Idea #2: Advanced Personalization with Ego-Boosting Nicknames
Strategy: Use flattering adjectives for both the recipient and their profession to create memorable, ego-boosting subject lines.
Formula: [Adjective-Personal] [First Name]’s [Profession] [Adjective-Professional/General]
Examples for Content Editors:
- “Appealing to Fabulous Finlay’s Editorial Genius“
- “Appealing to Judicious Jenna’s Editorial Genius“
Examples for Marketing Professionals:
- “Attention: For the Eyes of Walter – The Marketing Wizard Only”
- “Only Marketing Maestros Receive This Email – Congrats Walter, You Marketing Wizard“
How to Find the Right Adjectives:
- Use the Random Word Generator tool
- For editors: Find adjectives that editors would be proud of (e.g., “Judicious” – highly relevant as most editors must be very judicious)
- Choose adjectives that are complimentary and relevant to their profession
- Avoid negative adjectives (e.g., “Jealous” ❌) or irrelevant ones (e.g., “Jazzy” ❌ unless for jazz magazine editors)
The Power of This Approach: The second line will appear in the email preview alongside the subject line, creating a one-two punch of personalization and flattery.
The second line above appears in the email preview—this is the line that shows up alongside the subject line in the inbox, giving you double the impact.
Idea #3: Action-Based Email Sequences
Current Limitation: Our sequences send all follow-ups regardless of recipient behavior.
Planned Improvement: Implement conditional logic where:
- Email #2 only sends to recipients who opened Email #1
- Email #3 only sends to recipients who clicked a link in previous emails
This prevents annoying uninterested prospects while maximizing engagement with interested leads.
Idea #4: Technical Infrastructure Improvements
Specific technical checks are being evaluated and will be implemented based on team recommendations.
Idea #5: AI-Generated Personalized Images
Concept: Automatically generate images that include the recipient’s:
- First name
- Company name
- Other personalized elements
Tool to explore: Hyperise integration with Mailshake
Idea #6: AI-Generated Personalized Videos
The Power of Video: Sending a personalized video dramatically increases response rates. When someone receives a video featuring their LinkedIn profile or company website being reviewed, it creates a powerful connection.
Example approach: Record yourself navigating the recipient’s LinkedIn profile while providing commentary.
Tool to explore: Videoform integration with Mailshake
Key Takeaways
- Even successful campaigns need regular refreshing to avoid spam filters
- The 80/20 rule: Invest most effort in subject lines, not email body
- Less is more: Fewer emails, fewer links, simpler signatures
- Dual verification systems significantly reduce bounce rates
- Recovery is possible: Even heavily used campaigns can be salvaged
- Continuous improvement: Always test new personalization and targeting strategies
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