Email Bounces

• Bounce Reporting
  • Generate a Bounce Report
  • Generate a Bounce Report for a Specific Campaign
  • Link from Email Exception Report
• Email Bounce Admin
• Bounce Settings
• Bounce FAQs

Bounce Reporting

• Dropped - The message was suppressed to protect your sender reputation by avoiding duplicate spam or bounces.  This is treated as a hard bounce.
• Blocked - Recipient’s email server rejected message for a reason related to the message.  The error message will let you know how to revise the content.
• Bounced - The receiving server could not or would not accept the message.
  • Hard Bounce - A hard bounce is an e-mail message that has been returned to the sender because the recipient’s address is invalid.
  • Soft Bounce - A soft bounce is an e-mail message that gets as far as the recipient’s mail server but is bounced back undelivered before it gets to the intended recipient.  
     

When a member whose email address has been flagged as invalid attempts to log in, he or she will be directed to a page where the only option is to provide an alternate email address for registration. Once that new address is provided, the member's profile will automatically be updated and the Email_is_valid status reset to True. If the member is uncertain as to why he / she is being asked to supply a new address or if the email address on file is valid but was temporarily unavailable (such as happens when a mailbox reaches its full capacity), he / she may use the provided email link which will send a notification to the assigned Email Bounce Administrator. If there is no assigned Email Bounce Administrator, then this message will be sent to all of the Community's Super Administrators.

Hard Bounces
A single (1) "Hard Bounce" automatically sets a member's "Email_is_valid" field to "False." This means that the member will no longer receive Email Marketing communications.

Soft Bounces
In the default iModules configuration, once a member record receives five (default) "Soft Bounces", this will result in the "Email_is_valid" setting being switched to False, which will prevent the member record from receiving any community emails. The reason for the bounce might have been a temporary problem, such as a full email box or network slowness, and therefore requires five occurrences before setting the email address to a False status for "Email_is_valid".

Bounce Types / Error Codes

Undelivered emails are classified as dropped, blocked, soft bounce or hard bounce. Before the iModules system classifies a specific email communication and its intended email address, the system attempts to deliver the email for 72 hours. 

You can reactivate the member's account and continue to monitor the Bounce Report. If you continue to see bounces, contact the member and ask him/her to provide an updated email address. Repeatedly sending email to invalid accounts hurts your sender reputation and may increase the chance of all mail sent to that domain being marked as spam.

Generate a Bounce Report

1. Select Email Bounces.

2. When searching your bounced back emails, you may choose to filter by Date, Name, or Email address.

• If you choose Do Not Apply Any Filters, all kicked back emails will be displayed.
• To refine your search, click the Apply Email Bounce Filters checkbox and use any or all of the related filters.
  • If you enter only a Start Date, the search will include the selected date through the present. 
  • If you select only an End Date, the results returned will include all messages sent from that date back indefinitely. 
  • If you include a Start Date and an End Date, the results will only include messages sent during the specified date range.
  • You may choose to enter the first name (such as "John"), the last name (such as "Doe") or the full name (such as "John Doe").  Only enter those portions of the name which you are certain are correct, however.  If the individual's name is on file as "Jonathan Doe" and you enter "John Doe", it will not necessarily find him. 
• Filter By Date:
  You can use the Date Range filters to search for Email Bounces within a certain time period.  To do so, enter a Start Date, an End Date or a Start Date AND an End Date for your Date Range.
• Filter by Name:
  To search by name, enter all or part of the name of the person for which you are searching in the Filter by Name text box.
• Filter by Email:
  To search for a particular email address or part of an email address, enter it into the Filter by Email text box.

3. Click Generate Report.

4. You will see a preview of the Bounce Report.  Review the list to see if any of the emails are valid.  Select the checkbox by the email address to reset the system indicator so the member will continue to receive emails.

5. Click Update  to save changes.

6. Click Export to create a file for you to download.

7. Right click Download File to save the file to your local computer, or click on the link to open the file in your default spread sheet or text application.

Generate a Bounce Report for a Specific Campaign

1. Select Email Bounces.

2. Click the Email Name.  All bounces will be displayed.
NOTE: messages sent from the new Email Marketing tools won't appear in the grid. You should use the method described above to get this information.

3. Select additional filters:

• To refine your search
  • If you enter only a Start Date, the search will include the selected date through the present. 
  • If you select only an End Date, the results returned will include all messages sent from that date back indefinitely. 
  • If you include a Start Date and an End Date, the results will only include messages sent during the specified date range.
  • You may choose to enter the first name (such as "John"), the last name (such as "Doe") or the full name (such as "John Doe").  Only enter those portions of the name which you are certain are correct, however.  If the individual's name is on file as "Jonathan Doe" and you enter "John Doe", it will not necessarily find him. 
• Filter By Date:
  You can use the Date Range filters to search for Email Bounces within a certain time period.  To do so, enter a Start Date, an End Date or a Start Date AND an End Date for your Date Range.
• Filter by Name:
  To search by name, enter all or part of the name of the person for which you are searching in the Filter by Name text box.
• Filter by Email:
  To search for a particular email address or part of an email address, enter it into the Filter by Email text box.
• Filter by Campaign ID - This option is pre-populated with the Campaign ID>

3. Click Generate Report.

4. You will see a preview of the Bounce Report.  Review the list to see if any of the emails are valid.  Select the checkbox by the email address to reset the system indicator so the member will continue to receive emails.

5. Click Update  to save changes.

6. Click Export to create a file for you to download.

7. Right click Download File to save the file to your local computer, or click on the link to open the file in your default spread sheet or text application.

Link from Email Exception Report - Legacy Email Home

A link to generate a Bounce report for the specified email is available when you select to view the Email Exception Report for an email in Legacy Email History.

The Bounce Report option will take you to the existing bounce report filtered for the specific email campaign.  You can see the emails that were sent, but were bounced back and the error code / reason they were bounced back.  The bounce data is generated in a nightly process, so if the admin tries to view the bounces the same day as the send they will see not see any bounces listed, and there is a message 'No email kickbacks were returned for the filters you selected.'

The 'Filter by Campaign ID' will be pre-populated with the campaign ID from the campaign for which the admin is viewing the exception report.  The Clear / Reset Filters option will clear the campaign ID filter and return the admin to the main page for the bounce reporting with the email history grid to allow the admin to select any email and view the bounces.

Email Bounce Admin

As an administrator, you can avoid some member frustration by reviewing bounced email messages and error codes in the Email Bounce tool to make sure that soft bounces are not always flagged.

Email flagged as invalid

• When a member whose email address has been flagged as invalid attempts to log in, he or she will be directed to a page where the only option is to provide an alternate email address for registration.  Once that new address is provided, the member's profile will automatically be updated and the Email_is_valid status reset to True. 
• If the member is uncertain as to why he / she is being asked to supply a new address or if the email address on file is valid but was temporarily unavailable (such as happens when a mailbox reaches its full capacity),  he / she may use the provided email link which will send a notification to the assigned Email Bounce Administrator.  If there is no assigned Email Bounce Administrator, then this message will be sent to all of the Community's Super Administrators.
• Best Practice
  
  

  Type	Hard or Soft Bounce?	What should I do?	When should I raise a concern with iModules?
  Dropped	Hard	You should not email this address.	If you feel certain the address is good and the person has never marked your email as spam.
  Blocked	Neither	Revise content based on error message.	If the error message indicates an entire IP address is blocked.
  Soft Bounce	Soft	Review error message, think twice before sending again.	If your bounce rate is very high, you could be damaging your sender reputation.
  Hard Bounce	Hard	Contact constituent for a new email.	If your bounce rate is very high, you could be damaging your sender reputation.

  
  
• As an administrator, you can avoid some member frustration by reviewing bounced email messages and error codes in the Email Bounce tool to make sure that soft bounces are not always flagged.   For Example, if you note that the reason the email was returned was because the member's email box was full, you might want to reset the member's "Email_is_valid" field to "True" so that they will not have to enter a new address the next time they log in.
• Also, if a member contacts an assigned Admin regarding his / her account and ability to sign in with the email address on file, you can find the member's bounce record(s) and explain that the registered email address returned several Soft bounces or a single Hard bounce(and give the kickback reason).   The member can research what the problem may be with the address and help remedy the issue.

Bounce Settings

Bounce Settings enable custom configurations regarding when or if constituents' email addresses are set to invalid as a result of hard and/or soft bounces.
NOTE:  Super Admins and Email Bounce admins have access to the Email Bounces administrative tool.  

Setting for the number of soft bounces that will cause a member's primary email address to be set as "invalid"
Number of bounces - Sets the point at which soft bounces will invalidate a constituent's email address. The choices are 3, 4, or 5 bounces.

NOTE: The number and type of Email Bounces are also dependent upon the configuration of the receiving (end-user) server, and are therefore not within iModules control. It may take up to 5 days for an email to show up in the report, and depending on the type of failure, our system will try to send the message for up to 72 hours after the initial delivery. If the message appears in the bounce report, the system will not try to resend it.
 

When a member whose email address has been flagged as invalid attempts to log in, he or she will be directed to a page where the only option is to provide an alternate email address for registration.  Once that new address is provided, the member's profile will automatically be updated and the Email_is_valid status reset to True.  If the member is uncertain as to why he / she is being asked to supply a new address or if the email address on file is valid but was temporarily unavailable (such as happens when a mailbox reaches its full capacity),  he / she may use the provided email link which will send a notification to the assigned Email Bounce Administrator.  If there is no assigned Email Bounce Administrator, then this message will be sent to all of the Community's Super Administrators.

• Any instance of a Hard Bounce will cause a user's primary email address to be set as invalid.
• Setting for the number of Soft Bounces that will cause a user's primary email address to be set as "invalid". The choices are 3, 4, or 5 bounces.

Bounce FAQs 

Q.  How long is it before a deferral is resolved to delivered or bounced?

A.  72 hours

Q.  If I see bounces, when would the generating email have been sent?

A.  The email would have been deployed any time in the preceding 72 hours.