Handling bounced emails

A bounced email is a message returned to the sender because it wasn't delivered to the recipient. An email passes through several stages to reach its target, and even a message your mail server accepts may not be delivered, for many different reasons. To review bounces, go to Reporting > Messages and open the Message Report.

Types of bounces

• Soft bounce: A temporary failure—a busy mailbox, a blocked domain, a full mailbox, an account temporarily down, or a busy network. The message may still be delivered after retrying.
• Hard bounce: A permanent failure, usually a non-existent address. The message wasn't delivered.

Common reasons

• Spam filters: If the error mentions a spam reporting address, contact our support team to investigate.
• Blocked email: The recipient has blocked your emails or marked previous ones as spam.
• Invalid email address: The address doesn't exist, often because of a typo when it was entered.
• Vacation or auto-reply: An out-of-office reply registers as a bounce. Unlike other categories, this means the email was delivered.
• Mailbox full: The recipient's inbox is too full to receive more mail. Emails bounce until there's space.
• Undeliverable email: The recipient's provider wasn't responding. We retry for up to 3 days before labeling it a bounce.
• Other: Some providers don't use a standard error message; we categorize those as Other.

What to do with addresses that bounce

• Reach the recipient another way. Contact them by phone or a different email to troubleshoot. They may need to safelist MemberClicks with their email provider—see Safelisting.
• Clean up your bounced list. Reviewing bounce reports and cleaning your list regularly minimizes future bounces and helps your messages reach their recipients.

Removing problem email addresses

Removing addresses that bounce keeps your contact lists clean. To remove bounced addresses, open your Message Report.

Preventing future bounces

• Don't buy a list. Purchased lists violate our email permission policy, are a hallmark of spammers, and contain old addresses. Grow your list organically with people who've given you permission to email them.
• Encourage members to keep their profile information up to date.
• Test before sending. Send a test email to your own profile and check that everything, including links, works.
• Avoid content that trips spam filters. If your email lands in spam or junk folders, review the content:
  • Excessive punctuation and symbols
  • Overly promotional language like "free" or "buy now"
  • All caps in the email or subject line
  • Long subject lines—keep them short
  • Attachments
  • Spelling errors—always spell check
  • Too many images, and images that aren't resized before adding them (see Resizing images)