Bounce Definitions, Reporting and Segmentation

Bounces fall into two different categories: soft and hard bounces.

# Soft bounces

Iterable does not remove soft bounces from your user base. Here are the types of soft bounces and their definitions:

• SoftBounceGeneral, SoftBounceUndetermined MailBlockGeneral

  This is treated as a soft bounce because Iterable cannot determine the exact reason for delivery failure. It could be a non-standard error message, or too vague to be useful.

• SoftBounceTimeOut

  The connection timed out while trying to deliver the message.

• SoftBounceMailboxFull

  The email server cannot deliver your email because the recipient's inbox is full.

• SoftBounceContentRejected

  The recipient's email server has blocked your email on the basis that the content resembles spam. This mail block is often triggered by something detected in your email content.

• 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Hard bounces occur when an email is sent to a misspelled or outdated email address that is no longer in use.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 will automatically unsubscribe these users from the sending message channel.

# Exporting bounce reports

You can export in depth bounce reports in the campaign metrics view:

• Click the Export Events button. - Select Email Bounces.

  This will download a CSV file of all emails that bounced and the bounce type:

  

# Bounces in segmentation

You can query for users who have email bounces of a certain type using the segmentation tool. For example: