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SMS Bounces

A SMS bounce event happens when Iterable sends a SMS or MMS campaign and the receiving carrier rejects the message as undeliverable.

Similar to email, there are many reasons that SMS messages can bounce—ranging from spam filtering to invalid phone numbers or technical issues.

Iterable doesn't differentiate between soft and hard bounces for SMS like it does for email. This also means that Iterable does not unsubscribe the phone number when a message sent to it has bounced. SMS bounce events count towards SMS usage, so you want to keep an eye on their trends and avoid sending messages to users who continue to bounce.

To understand your bounce metrics and identify problems that you need to address, periodically review your reports. SMS bounce events reveal why a message bounced, which can present corrective actions to improve your SMS campaign delivery rates.

To learn about SMS bounce events in your Iterable campaigns and what to do about them, continue reading.

In this article

Viewing SMS bounce events

Here are a few ways to review SMS bounce events with varying levels of detail.

Viewing SMS bounce events for a campaign

To view the bounce events associated with a particular campaign:

  1. Go to Messaging > Campaigns and find the SMS campaign you want analytics for.

  2. Click View Analytics (just under the delivery rate metric).

  3. Adjust the time range filter to limit the range of data you want to export.

  4. Click on Export Events, select SMS Bounce, and click Export.

  5. When prompted, download and open the smsBounce.csv file.

Viewing SMS bounce events for a user

To view the bounce events associated with a particular user:

  1. Go to Audience > Contact Lookup and search for the user.

  2. Go to Events > History to view the Events History page.

  3. Use filters or search to locate SMS bounce events.

Example SMS bounce event

{
  "campaign": {
    "campaignAlertsEnabled": false,
    "campaignState": "Running",
    "createdAt": 1656539344994,
    "createdByUserId": "iterable-user@example.com",
    "dataScienceOptimizations": [],
    "id": 1111111,
    "ignoreFrequencyCap": false,
    "isArchived": false,
    "isDryRun": false,
    "labelIds": [],
    "messageMedium": "SMS",
    "mobileAppIds": [],
    "name": "string",
    "projectId": 11111,
    "quietHoursSendSkip": false,
    "suppressionListIds": [],
    "teamId": 11111,
    "templateId": 1111111,
    "updatedAt": 1658350135078,
    "updatedByUserId": "iterable-user@example.com",
    "useCustomRateLimit": false,
    "wasEverRecurring": false
  },
  "campaignId": 1111111,
  "createdAt": "2022-07-20T21:03:15.000Z",
  "email": "user@example.com",
  "errorCodes": [
    {
      "code": "40008",
      "detail": "The recipient carrier did not accept the message.",
      "meta": {
        "url": "https://developers.telnyx.com/docs/overview/errors/40008"
      },
      "title": "Undeliverable"
    }
  ],
  "eventType": "smsBounce",
  "itblInternal": {
    "documentCreatedAt": "2022-07-20 21:03:15 +00:00",
    "documentUpdatedAt": "2022-07-20 21:03:15 +00:00"
  },
  "messageId": "9c438a20d26e4e9f8ad4edea23f811cd",
  "messageStatus": "delivery_failed",
  "templateId": 1111111,
  "toPhoneNumber": "+14155550132"
}

Exporting SMS bounce events with Iterable APIs

To export all SMS bounce events for a project, use Iterable's export APIs and specify smsBounce for dataTypeName.

SMS bounce codes

In the bounce event, you can find the error code returned by the SMS provider. This information may also include a URL that takes you to a full description.

For an exhaustive list of error codes, see the associated documentation for your SMS provider:

IMPORTANT

Iterable does not unsubscribe users when their SMS has bounced.

Want to learn more?

For more information about some of the topics in this article, check out this Iterable Academy course. Iterable Academy is open to everyone — you don't need to be an Iterable customer!

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