Bounces
A bounce occurs when your newsletter cannot be delivered to your subscriber's email address. Your newsletter is then returned to Laposta's servers.
Hard bounces
A hard bounce occurs when your newsletter cannot be delivered at all, usually because the email address of a subscriber does not exist (anymore). With a hard bounce, the problem is structural. For this reason, Laposta automatically removes the affected subscriber from your list of active subscribers. This is important for your own reputation, as well as Laposta's. It must be prevented that the mail servers of your subscriber and Internet service providers will refuse mail traffic though a so-called spam block.
Subscribers that were automatically deleted after a hard bounce can be found in your list under cleaned subscribers. If it concerns an obvious spelling error in the email address, you can add this subscriber - after correcting the email address - to your list of active subscribers again.
In other cases, you will need to verify your subscriber's details in some other way (such as by phone) before adding it to your active subscribers, or you may have to permanently delete the subscriber.
To activate cleaned subscribers, go to the page Subscribers → View in your account. In the table under the tab Cleaned, you will find all your cleaned subscribers. After selecting the subscriber you want to activate, click on Details. Before you can activate this subscriber, you will first be asked to enter your subscriber's new, current email address.
By the way: subscribers that led to a complaint at Yahoo and Microsoft are also cleaned up. You can no longer activate these subscribers.
Soft bounces
With soft bounces, your newsletter cannot be delivered to your subscriber because of a temporary problem, usually because their mailbox is full or their mail server is down.
A soft bounce does not remove your subscriber from your list of active subscribers. After all, your newsletter could not be delivered temporarily, but it may be delivered next time. After a soft bounce on six consecutive newsletters, however, your subscriber will automatically be removed from your list.
Listing bounces per subscriber
Laposta keeps statistics of each individual subscriber. If a hard or soft bounce has taken place, you will see this in the statistics of your subscriber (see the page Subscribers → View (under Details).
Mention of exact cause of bounces
The number of hard and soft bounces in a campaign, with the corresponding email addresses, can be found on the page Results → Unsubscribes (under Bounces).
On this page you will find a further explanation of each hard and soft bounce in the table. For hard bounces, there are the following general explanations:
- Mail address does not exist
- Mailbox is not available
- Mail server does not exist
- Mailing does not meet requirements, and
- No connection possible
In the case of soft bounces, there are the following general explanations:
- Mailbox is full, temporarily
- Mail server is full, temporarily, and
- No connection possible, temporarily
These general statements are always followed by a number in brackets (e.g., 101, 446 or 511). These are so-called SMTP status codes, a more detailed description of the problem that has occurred. With these codes, technical experts know exactly what went wrong when sending a newsletter.