Bounce Mail Management

Soft Bounce

A soft bounce occurs when the email server rejects the email due to a seemingly temporary condition, such as a full inbox. When that happens, the system will retry sending the email to the subscriber every 15 minutes for 72 hours, which totals 288 tries. Only after the system attempts the 288 tries does a bounce appear in your tracking as bounced. Once a bounce appears in tracking, it is official and will not change.

The 288 re-tries do not count as bounces, instead 288 unsuccessful retries equate to one soft bounce. If the system attempts delivery 288 times and the message bounces each time, the subscriber's status is set to Bounced. If the email is delivered during the 288 tries and the subscriber opens the email, the subscriber's status is set to Active. Also, a Bounced subscriber can find an old email from you in their inbox and open it, which will return their status to Active.

After ExactTarget receives the third soft bounce for a subscriber, their status is set to Held.

The following table describes the causes of a soft bounce.

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Hard Bounce

A hard bounce occurs when the email server rejects the email due to permanent conditions (this typically results when "user unknown" or "domain not found" errors occur). What happens next depends on the subscriber's current status. If the subscriber's status was already Active, their status now changes to Bounced. No more attempts are made to send this email campaign to this subscriber, and the subscriber will be re-tried in your next email campaign. Every email send is considered an email campaign with respect to bounce handling.

If the subscriber's status was already Bounced, which indicates they had experienced a bounce previously, the application treats the bounce differently. If this email campaign is the first or second email campaign in which the subscriber bounced, the subscriber retains the Bounced status and will be re-tried in your next email campaign. No further attempts are made for this current email campaign.

If, however, this email campaign is the third campaign in which the subscriber bounced, the application checks when the first bounce message was received for this subscriber. If fewer than 15 days have passed since the first bounce message was received, the subscriber retains the Bounced status and will be re-tried in your next campaign. No further attempts are made for this current email campaign. If the bounce occurred more than 15 days prior to the first bounce message , the subscriber status changes to Undeliverable unless the bounce is from a trusted domain. A trusted domain is one in which ExactTarget trusts the ISP or receiver's bounce feedback implicitily. For example. if hotmail.com is a trusted domain, we trust Hotmail's feedback that an address is bad, and therefore we'll change the status of a hard bounced hotmail.com address to Undeliverable immediately instead of waiting for the address to bounce three times over 15 days. If the bounce comes from any other domain, a subscriber must receive three bounces to acquire an Undeliverable status. The application will not attempt delivery to this subscriber in any future campaigns. 

For the most current list of trusted domains, contact deliverability@exacttarget.com. 

While this model suits most cases, certain ISPs change from time-to-time based on how they handle spam and a number of other deliverability items. 

The following table describes the causes of a hard bounce.

If you have subscribers in a list who continually receive hard bounces you may want to think about removing them from your list. See Removing Subscribers with Hard Bounces From Your Subscriber List.

How ExactTarget Handles Bounces

As part of ExactTarget's Deliverability Report Card Service, if 20% or more of the email you send during a week (Monday through Sunday) bounces, you'll receive an Account Warning notice from Deliverability Services. If 40% or more of the email you send during a week bounces, you'll receive an Account Hold notice from Deliverability Services and be required to speak with a Deliverability Consultant before the account hold is lifted. 

ExactTarget takes bounces very seriously. Poor deliverability from any of our customers damages the reputation of the company and, by extension, all of our customers. Therefore, ExactTarget's Sending Guidelines and Thresholds are in place to prevent abuse of our email system and to ensure our clients practice permission-based, opt-in email. We continue to lead the industry in deliverability rates - due in part to our commitment to, enforcement of, and client consultation on permission marketing best practices.

Bounces for Integrated Solutions

Bonces for ExactTarget's integrated solution, such as Salesforce, are handled the same way as they are in ExactTarget. The same rules apply, but often, only the record of a bounce is passed back to the integrated solution. For example, with Salesforce, the bounce record is passed to Salesforce but you can't tell if it's a hard or soft bounce. The system only records the date and time of the event. 

For more information, see our AppExchange Tracking documentation.

Unsubscribed Status

Although subscriber addresses that have a status of Unsubscribed came to be in that state not because of a bounce, it's worth noting here in the context of Bounce Mail Management that a subscriber address will acquire a status of Unsubscribed in the following ways:

• The subscriber clicks an unsubscribe link in an email or chooses to be unsubscribed in a profile center
• The subscriber reports an email as spam to an ISP with which ExactTarget has a feedback loop (AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, and others)
• The subscriber's address is manually changed to unsubscribed by an ExactTarget user

Subscriber Status

A subscriber's email status is one of the fields that you can include when you export individual subscriber data or export an entire subscriber list and is also a field that you can use to filter your subscriber searches. Your subscriber workspace uses color-coded icons to indicate subscriber status.

Each subscriber has one of the following statuses: