How Flodesk Cleans Your List to Help Your Deliverability

I just wanted to give a heads up that when you import contacts into Flodesk, they will automatically be "cleaned" of duplicate emails, undeliverable emails, bounced emails, etc.

The contacts should all still be added to your account (except duplicates won't be added twice), but they will show as grayed out and you won't be able send emails to those addresses.

*Note that Flodesk distinguishes between a "hard" bounces and "soft" bounces, and when sending emails Flodesk will attempt to re-send to soft bounces. They will not re-send to hard bounces, which indicate that the address is undeliverable or nonexistent.

You may find this list-cleaning alarming initially, especially if you did not use double-optin with your previous service and didn't realize that you actually had a bunch on fake or undeliverable emails on your list.

You may be tempted to hold onto those contacts you so pain-stakingly collected. But just keep in mind that "list cleaning" like this is generally an additional paid service, and that continuing to send emails to subscribers that will never actually open them anyway (or worse, they will continue to bounce) can actually hurt your deliverability, i.e. the chances that your REAL subscribers will receive your emails!

I find that Flodesk's spam filters may be a little over-zealous at times, but overall I'd rather that than hurting my chances of my emails getting to the people that want them.

Here's Flodesk's help article about their automatic list cleaning


Side-Note About Flodesk FORM Spam Filters (?)

I haven't seen any official documentation about this, but in trying to do some testing of my Flodesk forms and workflows with some "burner" (temporary) email addresses, I found that Flodesk actually rejected most burner email addresses. In other words, I would fill out the form with a burner email, but nothing would happen. The address would not be added to my Flodesk account, and no workflow email would be sent.

I can only imagine that this is because Flodesk is aware that these emails are likely "fake," or at least unlikely to be checked again, so they are automatically filtered out at the form-level. I was a little surprised by this, as I'm sure some people may genuinely want to use burner or forwarding email addresses for privacy reasons.

But that said, MOST people use burner email addresses because they DON'T want to keep getting emails from people they subscribe to (or, for testing purposes like me ha), and rather than having to open an email and click "unsubscribe," they'd rather let all the emails go to an inbox they never check.

In either case, it appears that Flodesk is serious about protecting you against spam or fake email addresses being added to your account, even if it means a few well-intentioned subscribers slip through the cracks.

Overall, I think that I appreciate Flodesk's anti-spam efforts, but that it's helpful for both you AND your wannabe subscribers to understand that they may not receive any of your emails (or even be added to your list) if they try to subscribe using a burner email address.

*Something I'm considering adding below my Flodesk forms: A link to a page that explains the reasons why a new subscriber may not have gotten an email from me after subscribing, including using a burner or fake email address. Then I'd encourage them to use a real email address that they actually check, and remind them that they are free to unsubscribe or update their preferenes at any time.

Complete and Continue