How Transparent Digital Brought Bounce Rates from 20% to Under 1% with ZeroBounce

“We didn’t have a clear email list-cleaning system.”

When some of his clients’ bounce rates hit 20%, Transparent Digital read the writing on the wall. Founder Anthony Ridley understood he and his team needed a reliable way to clean email lists, but the question was who to turn to.

“I realized we needed an email validation system,” Ridley said. Being trusted by e-commerce brands means safeguarding the main communication channel between customers and the business. He went on: “We didn’t have a clear email list-cleaning system.”

Like many agencies, they relied only on engagement to trim email addresses. “We only pruned the emails by engagement, maybe twice per year, via a sunsetting flow that took six to twelve months to determine a profile’s engagement.”

The problem? Risky addresses could stay on lists for months – that’s enough time to do real damage.

With one account, things escalated quickly.

“We had a few clients who had list health issues, one being an attack of spam bots, causing a 16% bounce rate on the first welcome email.”

The problem didn’t go away either.

“In the case of the spam bot account, it was between 16% and 20% for almost two months until we implemented ZeroBounce.”

Other client accounts had bloated lists, and Transparent Digital was relying on engagement to prune inactive contacts. That’s a strategy that lets lots of bad actors slip by.

“We didn’t have a mechanism or system for cleaning beyond engagement, especially when it came to misspelled emails.”

Klaviyo is known for being an easy-to-use marketing software, but it isn’t without challenges. “Contacts need to bounce SEVEN times before they’re suppressed,” Ridley explains. That delay allowed bad data to linger.

Even more concerning were spam trap emails. “Honey pot or spam trap emails were landing some clients on blacklists.”

Ending up on a blacklist is particularly damaging, and even engaged customers and prospects will stop seeing your emails.

The agency needed a system they could rely on consistently, not a one-time fix.

Choose ZeroBounce. The team is incredible, the product is top-notch, and pricing is competitive. There’s literally NO reason NOT to choose ZeroBounce.

Anthony Ridley, Founder/CEO

What the Klaviyo + ZeroBounce Integration can do

Transparent Digital chose ZeroBounce mainly because of how well it serves Klaviyo users.

“We chose ZeroBounce because of its deep integration with Klaviyo, which allowed us to create a repeatable and predictable system for cleaning our lists on a monthly or quarterly basis.”

The decision was made easier thanks to ZeroBounce’s reputation and quality of its customer support. “The reviews online were great, so when we tried the platform and prices were competitive, and the support team was helpful, it was a no-brainer.”

After a crash course, the integration was up and running.

“Being new to the platform, it took me a day or two to fully understand the power of the Klaviyo integration and how we can use it to pass back information to the profiles in Klaviyo and create segmentations, flows, and auto-suppress web hooks.”

But once they fully implemented it, everything changed.

“Once we did, it unlocked a new world of what list cleaning looked like for my agency.”

Instead of waiting months to sunset inactive profiles, Ridley and his team built a system that proactively validates contacts. Risky emails are identified and blocked at the source before campaigns go out. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” 

You don’t have to wait for bounce rates to spike before you take control of your email list health and deliverability.

Marketers don’t know what’s in their lists

So, what was lurking in Transparent Digital’s email lists?

“The percentages of valid, invalid, catch-all, spam traps, abuse, and other risky contacts were surprising. Every list we uploaded had 1%–3% of invalid/bad emails.” Those were email addresses that would have continued damaging performance.

The bounce rate improvements were particularly dramatic. Before using ZeroBounce, some lists were hitting a dangerous  “16–20% bounce rate.”

What about after Ridley cleaned email lists with ZeroBounce? “We see bounce rates under 0.8% in every account we manage now.” More specifically, bounce rates now range between 0.3% and 0.8%.

BeforeZeroBounce

16–20%

Bounce Rate

AfterZeroBounce

0.3–0.8%

Bounce Rate

In some accounts the improvement was drastic. “We saw 20–50% decreases in bounce rates.” For an agency managing multiple client accounts, consistency is critical. Getting bounce rates low protects sender reputation, improves inbox placement, and prevents the risk of ending up on a blacklist.

“There’s literally no reason not to choose ZeroBounce”

For Transparent Digital, ZeroBounce isn’t just another SaaS in a pile of programs. It’s always running in the background, keeping all of their clients’ email marketing safe and high-performing.

Ridley isn’t shy about the praise. “Choose ZeroBounce. The team is incredible, the product is top-notch and pricing is competitive.” He encourages other people who use email to go for it: “There’s literally NO reason NOT to choose ZeroBounce.”

What started as a fix to a spam-bot crisis became a framework that works for all of the businesses the company services. ZeroBounce protects every client account so each email can get a chance to be seen – and convert.

For any agency built on helping brands land in the inbox, that level of reliability makes all the difference.

Need a fast and reliable way to clean your email lists? You can integrate ZeroBounce directly into your favorite tools and start checking every contact today. And if you want to give your email deliverability an extra boost, try the entire ZeroBounce suite.