Bounce Back Report - why and what to do
This report lists all the subscribers and their email addresses that were sent the email but returned by the receiving email server (your clients email server). It is very similar to 'Return to Sender' mail you get when doing a mail out.
These email addresses need to be updated or removed from your master subscriber list e.g Subscriber Management. The best way to do this is to reload your Master email list excel file directly into Subscriber Management.
Feel free to contact me on 02 9699 1888 for assistances with this.
When your newsletter email is sent from the CommControl system it is up to the receiving server to decide whether to accept the sent email or send a message back to your bounced report in CommControl. Most but not all receiving servers will bounce back a message from a rejected email address. If they do you’ll find the bounce message in the “long bounce reason” column of the report.
The report will have these columns;
- Subscriber - name of the subscriber, your client
- Email - email address that bounced back
- Bounce reason - this is the short reason why it bounced
- Long bounce reason - this is the message the receiving email server bounces back
- Resolved - you can click on the subscriber name and corect/update their email address from this report and this statement will change to "Resolved"
What is the long bounce reason?
This is the message received back from an email server that has bounced/rejected one of your email addresses. It states the reason why it (the receiving email server) bounced your email. If you need any help interpreting these sometimes technical reasons please call us here at Clientcomm on 02 9699 1888.
Why emails bounce
Bounced emails occur for a number of different reasons and most of the time it is out of your control. A couple of the main reasons why they occur are;
- Security on the receiving server is at a very high level, this is typical of government or educational institutions.
- Security on the receiving server has been tightened since the last newsletter was sent - e.g not letting html emails through, email contains words or statements that are listed on a Spam filter list etc. IF you see a number of common corporate email address domains (...@bigcorp.com.au) bouncing back this is a sure sign that the corporate server has blocked your newsletter.
- Recipient's email inbox is full, common in yahoo & hotmail accounts.
- The person/client has changed jobs and the corporate email address has been disabled.
- The person/client has changed IP providers - their email domain name has changed - @bigpond.com to @optusnet.com.au
- Common typos and spelling mistakes e.g comma instead of a full stop - ...@hotmail,com OR ...@bifpond.com
Reducing your bounced emails - what to do
- Where possible avoid government (gov.au) and educational (.edu.au) email addresses from clients. Ask for an alternative address if given one of these types of addresses from your client. Or mark these clients as accepting plain text emails only. This is done in subscriber management.
- Making a corporate client aware that your updates and newsletters are being blocked and not reaching them. They may agree to let your newsletter through their security
- Identify any high value clients and contact them for updated email details
- Remove or update all other bounced client emails on the report so you don't resend a bad email address.
Lost Emails
If a client on the subscriber list has not received an email and is not in your bounced report it can possibly be due to email security and response settings on the receiving server.
Lost emails are more often than not captured and quarantined by security settings on the receiving email system as they have not bounced back to CommControl - see your send out summary report - bounced. Remember it is up to the receiving server to decide whether to accept the sent email or send a message back to your bounced report in CommControl. Not all receiving servers will bounce back a message from a rejected email address
These lost emails could be quarantined at the Internet Provider level or the receiving email server level. Security can be set on three different levels;
- Internet Provider (IP – bigpond, Optus etc),
- Your company email server level and
- Your own local PC level (setting a filter in Outlook).