I created an automation in which the constraint included that email addresses “do not contain” the word “placeholder” (e.g., I have a lot of contacts without emails and I list them as [phone number]@placeholder.com).
This step was completely ignored by the automation and I sent 900 emails that bounced. What did I do wrong?
@tenpinsmore - not sure why contacts with the @placeholder.com addresses were let through the automation. Maybe try “does not contain placeholder.com” - include the “.com”
There is another solution though. I worked for an organisation with a lot of contacts who didn’t have an email address. To get around the bounce issue (and keep email reputation up) I asked our email provider to set up a sub-domain email address: noreply.ourdomain.com and have that set as a black hole - i.e. emails sent to whatever@noreply.ourdomain.com would be successfully delivered but then were automatically deleted, or went into a black hole.
Note that “ourdomain.com” in the @noreply.ourdomain.com address will need to be your active email domain name.
Hope that helps.
You might be better off tagging them, or simply not subscribing them to your email list.