If an email cannot be delivered to a recipient, a bounce occurs.
In this article, we explain everything you need to know about bounces and how to deal with bounced email addresses at CleverReach:
- What is a bounce?
- Types of bounces
- Bounce responses in an email campaign
- Filter by bounced recipients in a list
- Export bounces within a recipient list
What is a bounce?
The word bounce actually means "to bounce off". When you send a recipient an email, it can happen that this email is not accepted by the receiving server.
The email bounces off and cannot be delivered.
The receiving server then informs us that it was not possible to receive the newsletter. We automatically process this information for you.
In your CleverReach account, a bounced recipient is marked with a blue box:
Types of bounces
There are 2 types of bounces: Soft and hard bounces
The difference is that with a soft bounce the ban can last up to 1 month and with a hard bounce at least 1 year. This approach ensures that the reputation of the shipping servers is protected and that you therefore have a high level of deliverability. Bounces are managed globally across all customers. This means that there is a possibility that addresses in your system are marked as a bounce in your system, even though you have not yet written to them.
The bounces are automatically released by the system after the blocking period has expired and can then be written to again.
Soft bounces
Soft bounces are rejections with a temporary reason. The most common reason is a full inbox. For these recipients, we try the newsletter several times. If it still does not succeed, the recipient is the recipient is marked as a bounce. The address is blocked for up to one month and is then automatically reactivated. After that, the email address receives newsletters again.
Hard bounces
Hard bounces are rejections of the receiving server with a permanent reason. The most common reason is a mailbox that no longer exists. If you write to such a mailbox, CleverReach automatically receives the information from the receiving server that your delivery to this recipient will no longer be possible on a permanent basis. The recipient is then immediately blocked by CleverReach for at least 1 year.
Wording of the bounce messages
Bounce messages are not standardized - this means that each receiving server has its very own wording. We have created a small overview of known bounce messages.
Bounce feedback in an email campaign
Bounce messages from an email campaign can be found in the reports under Reports & Analyses.
After each newsletter dispatch, we list exactly to which email address delivery was unfortunately not possible due to a bounce response.
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Click on Reports & analyses in the menu on the left.
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Select the respective report.
- Click on the tab Activity and open the Bounces
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In the overview you can go to Action - Export bounce reports you can download a csv file in which all addresses and their bounce reasons are listed.
In the recipient's activities, you can also view the bounce message, the duration of the duration of the block and the reason for the bounce message. To do this go to Recipients in your CleverReach account, open your recipient list and your recipient. If the bounce was caused by a newsletter from you, you can view the reason under Activities.
If there is no activity there via the bounce response, the bounce is bounce was generated by another mailing and landed on the bounce index. Our bounce index is managed globally - i.e. across all customers.
Filtering by bounced recipients in a list
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Open your recipient list under Recipients
- Change the filtering from All to Bounces
Export bounces within a recipient list
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Click on the action button --- at the top right of the recipient list.
- Select Export results list.
Export all bounced recipients (across all lists)
If you work with several recipient lists, you can create a cross-list overview in the overview in the Recipients menu:
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There, click on the Bounces tab.
- Select Detect and download bounces.
You will receive a list of all recipients bounced in the account.
Please note that only the email addresses are exported here. No changes will be no changes are made to the system.
Here you will find more frequently asked questions:
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Correct soft bounces and correct hard bounces cannot be reactivated by our service team unfortunately not be released again before the blocking period expires. Our bounce management is designed to ensure the highest possible reputation for our servers and therefore for your mailings.
Should email addresses ever be reported as bounces, that are current and correct, you are welcome to contact our service team.
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Most bounces occur because mailboxes no longer exist or mailboxes are full. It is therefore normal that you have a few bounces with every mailing. have a few bounces. How many are "normal" also depends on how many recipients you write to. There is therefore no guideline.
Sometimes bounces occur because your newsletter is perceived as spam by the receiving server. perceived as spam. In order to increase the deliverability of your emails and minimize bounces due to spam rejections, please follow all the steps steps that here are described.
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Some email inbox providers such as T-Online require hard bounces a longer blocking period. To ensure that our emails - i.e. your newsletters - reach all reach all recipients in the best possible way, we comply with the providers' wishes. At present, this applies in particular to T-Online addresses.
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CleverReach works with a global → cross-customer bounce index.
This means that if a newsletter recipient has been contacted by another customer customer - and the email is bounced - then we already know that this recipient is currently or permanently unavailable. These addresses are then immediately marked as bounces in your account.
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With every import, a comparison is automatically made with our cross-customer bounce index takes place. It can therefore happen that email addresses are already already displayed as a bounce during the import, even if you have never have never been contacted by you.
If you were to write to mailboxes that no longer exist, even though a bounce message has already been sent, this would negatively affect the reputation of your mailings and the mailings of all our customers.
The most important information at a glance:
- Bounces occur when the receiving server cannot or does not want to accept an email or does not want to
- CleverReach does not trigger the bounces itself
- We receive bounce feedback from the receiving server
- Bounces are only determined after dispatch
- Soft bounces have a blocking period of up to 1 month
- Hard bounces have a blocking period of at least 1 year
- Recipients are automatically unblocked after the blocking period, if possible
- The figures from the bounce evaluation of a mailing and within the recipient groups cannot be compared
- All bounces are managed globally across all customers, which means that a bounce always applies to all our customers
Help & Support
If you have any questions or need help, you are very welcome to contact our contact our service team.