It's difficult to say exactly what to expect regarding distribution list maintenance, because it depends on how accurate the database of addresses is. Spelling mistakes that we can easily pick up (such as email@telkomas.net instead of email@telkomsa.net) are simply charged at R195 per hour. We can also send the bounced emails and failure list through to you so that you can go through it yourself and then send us an amended list for a short re-send, which is then charged in the same manner of R10 per 100. Where the domain name is spelt incorrectly, it normally fails during the send, as opposed to bouncing afterwards with an error message. This gives us a failure list that is pretty easy to work with.

Bounces are a bit more tricky, as we have to work with individual emails. Past experience tells us to work on an approximate rate of 30% of recipients that will bounce (out-of-office auto-replies excluded), but again it depends on the accuracy of the initial list. Excluding the bounced mails from future mailings is not all that essential from a legal perspective though, because it does not classify as an unsubscribe. It only implies a waste of money for the client, through unnecessary future mailings to non-existent addresses.

Unsubscribes must be handled immediately and carefully, but here we work on a much smaller rate of less than 5% per mailing on average, depending on how your mailing list was compiled initially. These must go into a permanent database of unsubscribers, which is purged from the main mailing list before every mailing. On unsubscribes you can work on a rate of R1.50 each. Failing to handle unsubscribes properly can result in a fine and the domain being blacklisted.