Hard Bounce Changes

Tiffani Stubblefield · January 2020

I have pages and pages of people that have a hard bounce and a soft bounce. However, when I change their email status to "good", their emails go through just fine. Is there a way to do a mass change from the bounce list to try those emails again?

We are missing a couple thousand folks because of this.

Daryl Bunker · January 2020

I don't know of a way to change those codes in bulk. I looked through the Import/Export options but it doesn't appear that you can change the Email Status or the Hard/Soft Bounce counts through a custom upload. It may be possible through a custom sync and/or the API, but I don't have enough experience with those to know the answer.

I'd be cautious about emailing people with hard bounce codes though. Soft bounces are ok and by default shouldn't be filtered out; usually a soft bounce is a temporary problem that unfortunately occurred when your email went out, but won't hurt you at all. Hard bounces, on the other hand, signify that you tried to send an email and it was undeliverable to that address. Unless there's been a change in the email address, I wouldn't change those codes or try to reset their email status, as you could hurt your sender reputation by constantly sending to bad email addresses.

Sarah Robie · January 2020

As Daryl suggests, I would not change hard bounces. There's usually a valid reason for you not emailing those, and retargeting them could put your deliverability reputation at risk.

Emails registered as soft bounces are likely still receiving many of your emails - Luminate does not prevent those with a soft bounce from getting an email deployment. Soft bounces are signals from the mailbox provider that they didn't deliver your email to that constituent for a number of reasons. So changing their status to "good" in Luminate won't change their likelihood of receiving your email.

Are you creating email target groups only for people with a "good" email address? If so, you can consider including "bad (soft bounce)" as well.

Grace Rose Khalsa · January 2020

Are you creating email target groups only for people with a "good" email address? If so, you can consider including "bad (soft bounce)" as well.

Sarah, thanks for this tip. Seems like it could be helpful, since, as LO says (and as Daryl pointed out), soft bounce is supposed to be a temporary, one-off type of situation and the address should actually still be good.

Tiffani Stubblefield · January 2020

I'll look into the email target groups. I've gone in and changed a few hard bounces back to good, and they started receiving my emails. This all happened right at the beginning of launching Luminate. We struggled getting emails out because of our security issues in-house and therefore a lot of these were done by mistake. That's why I'd like to change them all back to "good" or "unknown". I wouldn't do this any other time, it was only because of that error at the beginning.

Rachael Ahrens · January 2020

Hi there, It is not a good idea to ever change a hard bounce to good or unknown. Hard bounce codes are sent directly from the ESPs in order to protect you from emailing them again. The LO system also automatically filters them from target audiences to protect both your organization individually as well as LO's shared sender IPs. Do not reset them.

When you continually attempt to send to known hard bounces, you are considered a high risk of being a spammer. You're also at a very high risk of hitting spam traps by doing this. If you do it, you'll damage your individual sender reputation which could prevent valid constituents from receiving your messages. You'll also lower your sender IP score here at BB.

Trust what the ESPs send you. It is valid.

If you believe you experienced an error that would have caused the ESPs to return a hard bounce code, work with Support. That would be very unusual.

Jennifer Peters · January 2020

The state of email deliverability industry is continuously changing. We have two sessions in February that would be a great way to learn recommendations and how to implement those.
Luminate Benchmark Review: Email Deliverabilty: https://hello.blackbaud.com/LuminateOnline-BenchmarkReport-Webinars.html

Lara Provance, the Email Marketing Manager for The Student Conservation Association and Blackbaud's Katie Walters and Will Hull will review the 2019 trends in email deliverability, where we saw changes year-over-year, and what those changes may mean for your 2020 goals and strategic initiatives.

Q1 Luminate Online Town Hall: https://hello.blackbaud.com/Luminate_Online_Road_to_Success_Registration.html

What to expect?

Our panel of experts will discuss ways your emails are being graded, you’ll look “under the hood” at how our email system sorts and sends mail, and how you can leverage this knowledge in building campaigns. We’ll share steps your organization can take to improve your email inbox placement and as well as how to efficiently utilize Blackbaud’s recommendations for spam trap prevention and improve email deliverability.

Hope to see you all there!

Hard Bounce Changes

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