What is an email bounce?

Anonymous Blackbaud User

Sometimes, a problem is encountered when sending an email. These problems are recorded as "bounce" against a constituent record. There are two kinds:

1. Hard Bounce - A hard bounce is an indication that, at delivery time, a serious problem was discovered while sending email:

The email address on that contact record was syntactically invalid. A blank address is a good example, or one like this: john.google.com (no @). When Convio detects this situation, no delivery is attempted and the email status is changed to "Bad (Hard Bounce)" for that record.

The domain doesn't exist, e.g. bob@thisdomaindoesn'texist.com. This is frequently caused by a typo.

The mailbox doesn't exist at a real domain, e.g. nobody@convio.com

Another scenario is DNS (Domain Name Service) failure. This indicates a problem with (some part of) the Internet that prevents Convio from finding the destination mailserver, resulting in a bounce identical to #2, above

After two hard bounces, the record is marked with an email status of "Bad (Hard Bounce)" and no further email will be delivered to that address. Convio does this to conform with antispam agreements with ISPs and our hosting facility.

2.Soft Bounce - A soft bounce is an indication that a minor, hopefully temporary issue has occured. Mailservers frequently attempt to resend email, automatically for several attempts over a period of time (maybe 5 times in 72 hours, but mailservers are all configured differently).

The mailbox is full.

The mailserver is busy.