Dealing with hard bounce email addresses

Dan Reed

We are trying to stay on top of our hard bounce email records and either fix them or mark them in such a way that we can contact these records and retrieve an up to date and valid email address. In order to do so we had to come up with quite a convoluted method.  It is as follows:

Run "Greater than or equal to one" Report Query which searches for records that are NOT in "Hard Bounce Email Group" (7741) and puts them in a group called "Non hard bounce email group 2" (7821).  This updates once per day and these records are valid since the last time the following report was run.

Then we run the constituent report "Greater than or equal to one" about once per month - usually a few days after an email is sent out. This pulls records that are in "Non hard bounce email group 2" (7821) AND have a hard bounce count greater than or equal to one. In other words, records that have hard bounced since the last time the report was run and were not bouncing prior to that.

These are then fixed if possible in Convio AND in our offline database if applicable (not all of our records in Convio are in our offline database. If these records cannot be fixed then they are put into "Hard Bounce Email Group" (7741) so that they will not be pulled the next time we run "Greater than or equal to one" report.

Ideally, we would like to run a constituent report through the Report Writer that searches on all records that have hard bounced over a particular time period which would be a filter that would be edited at the time this report is run. We leave all of these records active so that if and when we find a valid email address, we can simply update the record's email address and mark it deliverable with a hard bounce count of zero.  We also want to keep the record active so that we can keep the Convio id (cons_id) attached to the offline record in DMIS. Or, if it would be be possible to simply mark all of our hard bounced records as inactive but still be able to update and reactivate these records if and when we find the and valid email address for the record WITHOUT the help of support.  Our guess is that the former idea is a more likely solution than the latter.

We would like to hear your thoughts....

Matt Burghdoff 2

That does seem overly complicated.  Have you tried running simply a query using these parameters:

Email --> Email Status --> Field Clause: "Equals" - "Bad (Hard Bounce)"

AND

System --> Modification Time --> Field Clause: "falls on or after" - date last run

I haven't tried to search for those specifically, just hard bounces to specific email groups which is an easy mail merge export.  You might want to give it a try if you haven't already.

TJ Spinks

These are both good suggestions however I would recommend the use of a built in Task for this exercise.

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

This task helps you identify and manage situations where we've been unable to reach Contacts via e-mail. Configurer this task to find the records that were unreachable at the last delviery attempt. This task coud then be set to run on schedule or you could run it manually in order to get results on demand.

The prime reasons this task is better than Queries for the same job:

1. A group is automatically generated with the results
2. Users that are no longer deliverable or headed that way will be discovered
   
3. Scheduled or on Demand usage depending upon the frequency of campaigns
4. The tasks considers users to which that email delivery was attempted
5. Configuration is no more than provioding a Name, Description, determining the Bounce type to consider, and setting the schedule

Thanks for checking this out. Hope you find it useful in managing your list.

HowTo Setup Ivalid Email Task:

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

1. From Data Management select Tasks
2. Click on Task List tab
3. Click Create New Task
4. Select Invalid Email from the Task Type list
5. Provide a name for the task
6. Provide a description for the task
7. Cet the task to Active YES (defaults to NO).*
   
8. Select "The last e-mail was undeliverable due to a 'hard' bounce." (selected by default)
9. Choose when the task should upte (default is weekly).
10. Save the task.

* When the Task is Active NO it can be executed immediately from the Task List. After Running it for the first time Enable the Task for regular updates.

--TJ

Message was edited by: tspinks

Bryce Katzman

TJ Spinks:

These are both good suggestions however I would recommend the use of a built in Task for this exercise.

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

This task helps you identify and manage situations where we've been unable to reach Contacts via e-mail. Configurer this task to find the records that were unreachable at the last delviery attempt. This task coud then be set to run on schedule or you could run it manually in order to get results on demand.

The prime reasons this task is better than Queries for the same job:

1. A group is automatically generated with the results
2. Users that are no longer deliverable or headed that way will be discovered
   
3. Scheduled or on Demand usage depending upon the frequency of campaigns
4. The tasks considers users to which that email delivery was attempted
5. Configuration is no more than provioding a Name, Description, determining the Bounce type to consider, and setting the schedule

Thanks for checking this out. Hope you find it useful in managing your list.

HowTo Setup Ivalid Email Task:

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

1. From Data Management select Tasks
2. Click on Task List tab
3. Click Create New Task
4. Select Invalid Email from the Task Type list
5. Provide a name for the task
6. Provide a description for the task
7. Cet the task to Active YES (defaults to NO).*
   
8. Select "The last e-mail was undeliverable due to a 'hard' bounce." (selected by default)
9. Choose when the task should upte (default is weekly).
10. Save the task.

* When the Task is Active NO it can be executed immediately from the Task List. After Running it for the first time Enable the Task for regular updates.

--TJ

Message was edited by: tspinks

TJ,

This task sounds spectacular! Would you mind spelling out how to set it up?

Thanks

Bryce

TJ Spinks

Bryce Katzman:

TJ,

This task sounds spectacular! Would you mind spelling out how to set it up?

Thanks

Bryce

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

1. From Data Management select Tasks
2. Click on Task List tab
3. Click Create New Task
4. Select Invalid Email from the Task Type list
5. Provide a name for the task
6. Provide a description for the task
7. Cet the task to Active YES (defaults to NO).*
   
8. Select "The last e-mail was undeliverable due to a 'hard' bounce." (selected by default)
9. Choose when the task should upte (default is weekly).
10. Save the task.

* When the Task is Active NO it can be executed immediately from the Task List. After Running it for the first time Enable the Task for regular updates.

Matt Burghdoff 2

TJ Spinks:

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

1. From Data Management select Tasks
2. Click on Task List tab
3. Click Create New Task
4. Select Invalid Email from the Task Type list
5. Provide a name for the task
6. Provide a description for the task
7. Cet the task to Active YES (defaults to NO).*
   
8. Select "The last e-mail was undeliverable due to a 'hard' bounce." (selected by default)
9. Choose when the task should upte (default is weekly).
10. Save the task.

* When the Task is Active NO it can be executed immediately from the Task List. After Running it for the first time Enable the Task for regular updates.

Hi TJ,

I've only got 7 options in the Task Type selection.  They are:

Contact Approval

Contact Monitor

Duplicate Finder

Email Response Rate Segmentation (my personal favorite)

Interest Segmentation

RFM Segmentation

Web Site Enagement Segmentation

None of these appear to have anything relating to email bounces.  Are there perhaps additional security permissions I should request from my account manager to be able to use this task?

Bryce Katzman

Matt Burghdoff:

Hi TJ,

I've only got 7 options in the Task Type selection.  They are:

Contact Approval

Contact Monitor

Duplicate Finder

Email Response Rate Segmentation (my personal favorite)

Interest Segmentation

RFM Segmentation

Web Site Enagement Segmentation

None of these appear to have anything relating to email bounces.  Are there perhaps additional security permissions I should request from my account manager to be able to use this task?

I'm with Matt (only have the 7 tasks) and support says that these are the "stock tasks"...

Jessica Sotelo

TJ Spinks:

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

1. From Data Management select Tasks
2. Click on Task List tab
3. Click Create New Task
4. Select Invalid Email from the Task Type list
5. Provide a name for the task
6. Provide a description for the task
7. Cet the task to Active YES (defaults to NO).*
   
8. Select "The last e-mail was undeliverable due to a 'hard' bounce." (selected by default)
9. Choose when the task should upte (default is weekly).
10. Save the task.

* When the Task is Active NO it can be executed immediately from the Task List. After Running it for the first time Enable the Task for regular updates.

I also only have the 7 options listed above.  I am very interested in the Invalid Email task.

TJ Spinks

TJ Spinks:

Data Management -> Tasks -> Task List -> Create New Task -> Invalid Email

1. From Data Management select Tasks
2. Click on Task List tab
3. Click Create New Task
4. Select Invalid Email from the Task Type list
5. Provide a name for the task
6. Provide a description for the task
7. Cet the task to Active YES (defaults to NO).*
   
8. Select "The last e-mail was undeliverable due to a 'hard' bounce." (selected by default)
9. Choose when the task should upte (default is weekly).
10. Save the task.

* When the Task is Active NO it can be executed immediately from the Task List. After Running it for the first time Enable the Task for regular updates.

Well, that isn't right...  Reviewing this to verify settings etc.

One thing I would mention is that Convio Admin permissions fail to the least permissable.  This means that if your admin account is in an admin security group that allows full access while also in one that restricts access the winner will be the restriction. If your admin account should have the most permissible access please make sure that it belongs to as few admin security groups as possible.

TJ Spinks

TJ Spinks:

Well, that isn't right...  Reviewing this to verify settings etc.

One thing I would mention is that Convio Admin permissions fail to the least permissable.  This means that if your admin account is in an admin security group that allows full access while also in one that restricts access the winner will be the restriction. If your admin account should have the most permissible access please make sure that it belongs to as few admin security groups as possible.

Reviewed site config and user perms.  I've loggeed this as a bug and will be working to resolve the issue.

The "Invalid Email" Task should be part of the baseline offering of configurable tasks.

Please note that when this task is available and running you may return quite a large number of results. This will be expected as the task looks for users that were undeliverable the last time that ta message was attempted to target them. There is no date configuration to retrieve only recent bounces.This however does give good visibility in to constituents that may need to be culled from the list.

I will post further update to this topic when the issue has been resolved. Thanks to all who posted indicating the issue.

--TJ

Matt Burghdoff 2

TJ Spinks:

Reviewed site config and user perms.  I've loggeed this as a bug and will be working to resolve the issue.

The "Invalid Email" Task should be part of the baseline offering of configurable tasks.

Please note that when this task is available and running you may return quite a large number of results. This will be expected as the task looks for users that were undeliverable the last time that ta message was attempted to target them. There is no date configuration to retrieve only recent bounces.This however does give good visibility in to constituents that may need to be culled from the list.

I will post further update to this topic when the issue has been resolved. Thanks to all who posted indicating the issue.

--TJ

Thanks for looking into this, TJ.  It sounds as if it will be pretty useful once we can get access to it.

TJ Spinks

Matt Burghdoff:

Thanks for looking into this, TJ.  It sounds as if it will be pretty useful once we can get access to it.

The "Invalid Email" task should oncemore be available to Admins.

--TJ

Bryce Katzman

TJ Spinks:

The "Invalid Email" task should oncemore be available to Admins.

--TJ

Sweet! Thanks