Bounce Definitions, Reporting, and Segmentation

This document describes soft and hard email bounces, which occur when a message can't be delivered.

# In this article

# Soft bounces

Soft bounces occur when a mail server can't deliver a message to a valid email address. There are various types of soft bounces:

• SoftBounceGeneral, SoftBounceUndetermined MailBlockGeneral

  Iterable can't determine the reason for the delivery failure, possibly because of a non-standard error message from the server.

• SoftBounceTimeOut

  The connection timed out while trying to deliver the message.

• SoftBounceMailboxFull

  The recipient's inbox is full.

• SoftBounceContentRejected

  Based on the message's content, the server thinks it is spam.

• SoftBounceSpamDetected or MailBlockSpamDetected

  The ISP has detected content from your email that resembles spam. The trigger can be related to your content, IP address, or a sending domain that has a poor reputation.

# Hard bounces

Hard bounces occur when an email is sent to a misspelled email address or to one that's no longer in use. By default, Iterable automatically unsubscribes hard-bounced users from the sending message channel and other channels of the same type and medium.

For example, consider the following message channel and type setup:

With these channels and types, Iterable unsubscribes from channels 1 and 2 users who hard bounce a message from channel 1. However, those users stay subscribed to channels 3 and 4.

# Exporting bounce reports

Use the Campaign Analytics view to export detailed bounce reports:

1. Click Export Events:

   

2. Select Email Bounces:

   

3. This downloads a CSV file that lists all bounced emails and their bounce types:

   

# Bounces in segmentation

Iterable's segmentation tool makes it possible to segment for users who have email bounces of various types:

# Additional resources

• For more information about bounce types, as determined by Amazon SES, see Bounce Types.

• For descriptions of SparkPost bounce codes, see Bounce Classification Codes.