Suppressing Soft Bounces (Any email min. 3x) Encouraged?

[Tom_Kerlin2]

Hello,

I use a smart list to suppress leads who have soft bounced a minimum number of 3 times for any email sent to them (A lead can only soft bounce 1 time per email, so this would be any 3 soft bounces for any set of emails ever sent to a recipient?).

Is this encouraged for all sends? I wasn't sure if this impacts our IP/Domain reputation at all, but at some point we'd probably want to try re-sending to this group of people right?

Thanks,

Tom

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Tom,

suppressing soft bounces might be quite hard, especially if you do not set time constraints.

I would rather suspend them for a while (e.g. 1 month) if they have had multiple (e.g.) soft bounces in a quite short duration (1 months), then put them back to normal, and delete them do this if it keeps happening.

The reason behind this is that soft bounces can really be a minor an temporary issue (mail box full) but if you send emails frequently the limit of 3 will be reached quickly.

-Greg

[SanfordWhiteman]

'nother wrinkle is that soft bounces can result from a mere typo in the domain name. If the mistyped domain name doesn't exist, that's "soft" -- there's no firm thumbs-down response from a mailserver, so it isn't "hard," as strange as that might seem.

Of course, without hand-inspection you can't know the exact situation. (Not all typos are readily apparent, though if you have deliverable leads at a similar-looking domain that's a leg up.)

[Tom_Kerlin2]

Thanks Sanford,

Related to the same suppression smart list I brought up on initial question, but does it make sense to Marketing Suspend leads that have experienced multiple Hard Bounces? I have a recurring batch campaign that will suspend emails with multiple Hard Bounces, but after the first hard bounce occurs the email will be marked invalid and Marketo will automatically exclude them from future sends right?

[Tom_Kerlin2]

Hey Greg,

That same smart list also suppresses any leads that have an Email Invalid, Black Listed, Marketing Suspended or Unsubscribed status set to 'true.' But is this even necessary, since Marketo will supposedly exclude these people from a send automatically? Can an email hard bounce and not be marked 'Email Invalid'?

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Tom,

Suppressing useless data from Marketo is only necessary to comply with your licence limitations. With regards to email, Marketo will always filter out invalid emails and black listed from any email (batch or trigger)

What we usually do is that we suspend emails that had a series of soft bounced, then release them a while later.

Note that not all hard bounced will be marked as email invalid by Marketo. It depends on the error code. Hence the need to manage some of them by yourself.

read these:

• Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails
• Monitoring Email Deliverability: Bounces - Part I
• How to deal with bounces in Salesforce?

-Greg