Managing Bounces, Invalid and Multiple Emails

Jayme Fancher

We have not paid much attention to using the data in bounce reports in the past. I'm making it a personal project to start weeding through the data and clean up our email records so that we can actively seek to update those who have fatally invalid emails. I would appreciate advice on any of the following:

-Handling Bounce Email Reports from BBNC-

I pulled a bounce report as instructed here: https://www.kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/51760 and am working through deactivating ones that returned based on this list of bounce types: https://www.pardot.com/blog/bounce-codes/

I have 700 returned constituents that I've sorted by hard/soft bounce types. Wondering what best practices are out there for:

   1 - Which bounce types to inactivate in a database? (is there a best practice you generally follow/suggest?)

   2 - How many bounces before an address in inactivated?

-Handling 'invalid address' in BBNC email send report-

We average between a 6-10% (sometimes 15%!!) rate of 'invalid email address' reported on email send reports. I can't get a straight answer from BBNC (I suppose there is no black or white answer) on if these are fatally invalid emails that we should work out of our database. With a recent send, 4,000 emails (of 30,000) were invalid, so line by line editing/contact is not a best practice for us.
Would like to hear what your processes are for working with these 'invalid address' emails.
Also, is it true these are pulled off of the BBNC send report, and are not logged into the NetCommunity data in Raiser's Edge (hence, no way to query them from RE)?

-Establishing send hierarchy with multiple emails on file- 

We have 4 email types built out in Raiser's Edge. By default, our students and former staff/admin/faculty retain their school address as their first option email type (Email1). Donors, parents and various other constituents have an email in Email1 as well. We use this Email1 address field for our email sends through NetCommunity and follow it with the send order Email1, Email2, Email3, Email4. We have seen that many do not keep these addresses current after leaving our institution and quite a few have a secondary email on file Email2 but that is never used because the Email1 field triggers a send. We are exploring what others do in regards to their email sends and have tossed around the idea of sending an 'update my information' email and sending it to all email types on file for an individual (so one person could receive that in 4 email boxes potentially) and allowing them to respond with their preferred Email1 address.
Anyone out there send to all emails on file when they email?

Do you look for feedback from individuals on a preferred email address to place in Email1?

By default, do you use an organization email (for students, alum, staff) in the Email1 field or have a separate (ex:EmailOrg) for those?

Elaine Tucker

To globally update your invalid addresses from netcommunity go to Email - invalid addresses & export them out.

I then run a query/export on those addresses and then import them back in as "email invalid"  phone type

I also add a database note that this change was made because it was listed as invalid in NC.


We also have a business rule that pops up (in database view) to alert anyone opening the record that this person has an invalid address and if they have an update address to let me know.

If the new "valid" address is the same as the one NC has marked as invalid I go to NC and update the email as "valid"  if the new email address is different I mark the invalid email in RE  as "previous email" phone type