soft bounces in online express

Hi Steve Townsend‍. We generally give the overarching guidance that any email address that shows no evidence of email engagement over a long period of time (definition of "long" in this case is the subject of much debate) should at some point be suppressed from ongoing mailings with the intent of preserving your overall email sending reputation. Mailbox providers keep track of how often you attempt to send emails to addresses that show no history of engagement (including recipient addresses that bounce) and they penalize senders who repeatedly send emails to recipients (including bounced recipients) who don't show behavior-based evidence of wanting those emails.


My point in sharing all of that is that a holistic, engagement-centric approach to segmentation will by definition account for addresses like the one you mention.


To answer your specific question, OLX doesn't currently automatically "convert" X-number of repeated soft bounces to being treated like a hard bounce. That's something we've evaluated and considered doing but we don't do today. But yes I'd agree that it's a good idea to exclude email addresses like what you've described. Some organizations delete those email addresses altogether and some keep them but identify them as "should not use" by either marking the address as "Do Not Email" in RE or assigning a specific email type created for this purpose.


Thanks and great question!

Chris Martin

Blackbaud Product Management

I also have the same question - does OLX provide any detailed information about soft bounces? All that I can see in OLX for soft bounces is "bounced". For hard bounces, the Unusable Email pop up gives a reason for he hard bounce.