Emails that bounce

Current version: 10.3

A bounce email is an email message that is returned to the sender because it cannot be delivered.

There are two kinds of bounce email:

  • A soft bounce is a temporary failure and there is a chance that the recipient will receive the message eventually. A soft bounce means that the recipient's mail server recognizes the email address but the message is returned to the sender, for example, if the recipient's email box is full, the mail server is temporarily unavailable, or the recipient no longer has an email account at that address.

  • A hard bounce is a permanent failure. A hard bounce means that the email message is permanently bounced back to the sender because the address is invalid.

In EXM, when a soft bounce is registered for a recipient:

  • If the recipient is a Sitecore user, the UndeliveredCount property in the recipient's profile is incremented by one.

  • If the recipient is an xDB contact, the BounceCount field of the Email property in the recipient's profile is incremented by one.

On the manager root item, in the Subscription Control section, the Undelivered Max field defines the number of soft bounces and the value of the UndeliveredCount property. When this number is met, no more email messages can be sent to the recipient.

Content Editor Email Campaign node and the Subscription Control section.

If a hard bounce is registered for a recipient, the undelivered count is set equal to the value in the Undelivered Max field. In this case, EXM also removes the email address from the relevant contact lists and adds it to the global opt-out list.

If a recipient clicks a link in an email message that was sent using EXM, their UndeliveredCount property is set to zero.

Note

When you receive spam complaints from a recipient, EXM also removes their email address from the relevant contact lists and adds it to the global opt-out list to make sure you do not send more email messages to them.

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