What is a bounce
A "bounce" occurs when an email is not successfully delivered or is rejected by the recipient's mail server.
Bounces can be of two types: Hard Bounce and Soft Bounce.
Difference between Hard Bounce and Soft Bounce
Learn the difference between Hard Bounce and Soft Bounce and what are the main causes that determine them.
Hard Bounce
This occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to a permanent reason.
The main possible causes are:
- Non-existent address: the recipient's email address does not exist or is invalid
- Non-existent domain: the domain of the recipient's email address does not exist
Soft Bounce
This occurs when an email cannot be delivered or is rejected for a temporary reason. This might happen, for example, when the recipient's mailbox is full, when the receiving mail server is temporarily unavailable, or when the email message is too large.
Depending on the nature of the temporary reason, Magnews classifies Soft Bounces into four different subtypes:
- Soft User Bounce: a transient error due to an issue with the recipient. Some possible causes:
- Full mailbox: the recipient's mailbox is full and does not have available disk space to receive more emails
- Abandoned mailbox: the recipient's mailbox is suspended. Mailboxes can be suspended by Mailbox Providers if the user does not access them for a long period
- Rejected by user: the recipient's mailbox automatically forwards emails to another mailbox, but the mail server of the latter, for some reason, does not appreciate the forwarding and rejects the email
- Filtered by user: the email was rejected based on a custom rule set by the recipient
- Soft Block Bounce: a transient error due to an issue involving the sender's reputation or the message content. Some possible causes:
- Sender not accepted: the email was not accepted because:
- the Mailbox Provider determined that you have a low sender reputation
- it was blocked by the recipient's anti-spam/blacklist systems
- the sending IP or email domains are on some blacklist
- Message content not accepted: the content of the email was classified as spam by spam filters
- Access denied: the recipient's mail server is incorrectly configured (e.g., old/outdated/new domain and not yet configured) or has been configured not to receive external mail.
- Sender not accepted: the email was not accepted because:
- Soft Technical Bounce: transitory error due to an issue with the recipient's mail server. Some possible causes:
- Receiving server issue: the receiving mail server experienced a temporary malfunction or there were authentication problems with the email (e.g., the sender domain publishes a DMARC record with a reject policy but lacks the necessary DKIM to ensure DMARC alignment and prevent emails from being blocked by Mailbox Providers).
- Network issue: due to a temporary network or DNS issue, the receiving mail server was unable to accept and process the email.
- Other Soft Bounce: transitory error for which further details about the problem are unavailable. The cause here will always be a generic issue.
How to view bounces in Magnews
Communication report
For each sent communication, you can view the details of the bounces recorded in the Bounce Analysis report.
Go to Insight > Communications, click on the name or preview of the communication to access the communication report, and finally click on Bounce Analysis.
The report consists of several sections:
- Bounce Analysis: provides a comprehensive view of the total number of recorded bounces and the bounce rate. It is organized into three tabs:
- Type: shows for each type of bounce how many contacts have recorded it, the number of domains involved, and the bounce rate.
- Cause: adds to the information already present in the Type tab the cause for which a specific type of bounce was recorded.
- Detail: provides an even more detailed level of insight into the cause of each type of bounce.
- Domains with Hard Bounce, Domains with Soft User Bounce, Domains with Soft Block Bounce, Domains with Soft Technical Bounce, Domains with Other Soft Bounce
These sections list the domains that have recorded the highest number of bounces and the domains for which there may be delivery issues.
Transactional communication report
You can view the bounces recorded for transactional communications and workflow messages from their Synthesis report.
To access the Synthesis report of a transactional communication, go to Insight >Transactionals and click on the name or preview of the communication of interest.
For that of a workflow message:
- Go to Journey Lab > Journey > Workflow
- Click on the name or preview of the workflow of interest
- Go to the Messages section, which contains the list of all workflow messages
- Click on the three dots at the end of each message row and click on Report
The synthesis report is divided into three sections: Performance, Bounce Analysis, and Content Clicks
In the Bounce Analysis section, you can see:
- Type of bounce
- Cause
- Number of contacts for whom the email could not be delivered
- Bounce rate
How Magnews handles bounces
Magnews automatically adds to the Blacklist the email addresses of contacts who register two consecutive Hard Bounces and five consecutive Soft User Bounces, excluding them from future sends.
From the Blacklist Configuration, it is possible to activate the management of Soft Block Bounces, Soft Technical Bounces, and Other Soft Bounces as well.