Bounce Definitions, Reporting, and Segmentation

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

# Soft bounces

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

• SoftBounceGeneral, SoftBounceUndetermined MailBlockGeneral

  Iterable cannot determine the reason for the delivery failure (potentially 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 sending domain that has a poor reputation.

# Hard bounces

Hard bounces occur when an email is sent to a misspelled or outdated email address that is no longer in use. By default, Iterable automatically unsubscribes hard-bounced users from the sending message channel and other channels of the same type (marketing/transactional) and medium (email, push, etc.).

For example, consider the following message channel setup:

• Channel 1, an email marketing channel
• Channel 2, an email marketing channel
• Channel 3, a push marketing channel
• Channel 4, a transactional email channel

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

# Exporting bounce reports

Use the Campaign Analytics view to export in-depth 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: