We are reviewing our WordFly integration in relation to handling response codes. I'd like to know how other organizations handle soft bounces. Do your soft bounces eventually turn into a hard bounce? If so how long do you wait? Is there anything you specifically do with your soft bounces? I appreciate any discussion or opinions. thanks!!
Hi Randall,
We are looking into adding some sort of flag on the Constituent Header when a email address hard bounces, prompting Ticket Office to ask when/if the customer makes contact at the ticket office.
We also don't really pay attention to Soft Bounces too much.
Kelly
We have a rule that says if it soft bounces x number of times consecutively then we remove them. We review what we have as the x value every so often, by looking at how many soft bounces we are getting etc.
Caryl
Hi all,
We have it set up so that if a customer's email hard bounces, it shows up as a strike-through in the constituent header (which is customised for every department here slightly differently).
B
JAMIE O'BRIEN
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICESTHE NEW 42ND STREET229 W 42ND STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10036JOBRIEN@NEW42.ORG646.223.3063WWW.NEW42.ORG
We are reviewing our WordFly integration in relation to handling response codes. I'd like to know how other organizations handle soft bounces. Do your soft bounces eventually turn into a hard bounce? If so how long do you wait? Is there anything you specifically do with your soft bounces? I appreciate any discussion or opinions. thanks!!This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Marketing Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Marketing forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!
Hi Randall and Jamie,
I noticed a high number of soft bounces a few month back which were attributed to an AOL mail block. That was resolved quickly and we haven’t had any other issues.
To improve inbox deliverability, we have also worked with Wordfly to address 'unknown' soft bounce addresses that bounced consistently for a number consecutive campaigns. An 'unknown' soft bounce address is a response from the ISP that they do not know this address. In a way it's a preemptive warning to the sender that this is going to be a hard bounce later on and many times these addresses are linked to abandoned mailboxes. Typically addresses will bounce as unknown for 6-12 months before they become hard bounces or spam traps.
We have updated our bounce handling procedure to mark these ‘unknown’ soft bounce addresses after 10 consecutive bounces as a hard bounce.
Thanks, Alex
Alex Barber Digital Marketing Manager
ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY
231 West 39th St. | Suite 1200 | New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212.719.9393 ext. 317| Fax: 212.869.8817
alexandrab@roundabouttheatre.org | roundabouttheatre.org
From: Tessitura Marketing Forum [mailto:forums-marketing@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Jamie O'Brien Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 10:32 AM To: Alexandra Barber Subject: Re: [Tessitura Marketing Forum] "Best Practices" for Soft Bounces
Hi Randall -
My understanding is that a soft bounce means an Out of Office type message and a hard bounce means that the email address isn't valid. I would presume that an Out of Office that's really saying that a person has left a company, etc will eventually turn into a hard bounce. I'm not inclined to pay much attention to soft bounce stats, but know I want to pin down exactly how we treat hard bounces--need to make sure changes to the record will be on the address level rather than simply marking the entire record Do Not Email, etc.
If others have a different read on the soft bounce meaning, I would like to hear if my knowledge has become outdated though.
Jamie
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICES THE NEW 42ND STREET 229 W 42ND STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10036 JOBRIEN@NEW42.ORG 646.223.3063 WWW.NEW42.ORG
On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 11:12 PM, Randall Mitchell <bounce-randallmitchell8646@tessituranetwork.com> wrote:
This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Marketing Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Marketing forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!
Thank you Jamie. The discussion point we are having is when and how does a soft bounce turn into a hard bounce. We recently ran a report from WordFly that showed over 16,000 soft bounces, some of which apparently are turning into potential blacklist initiators. Does a soft bounce convert to a hard bounce in 3 months? 6 months? Do you have any special handling rules or CSI’s generated at the soft bounce level once it’s been listed for a specific period of time?
Again, I appreciate the discussion and opinions.
Randall A. Mitchell Director of Information Systems | The Phoenix Symphony | Tel. (602) 452-0440 | Mobile. (602) 796-9323 | Fax. (602) 253-1772 www.phoenixsymphony.org | 1 N. 1st Street, Ste. 200, Phoenix, Az 85004
From: Tessitura Marketing Forum [mailto:forums-marketing@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Jamie O'Brien Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 7:31 AM To: Randall A. Mitchell Subject: Re: [Tessitura Marketing Forum] "Best Practices" for Soft Bounces
We are reviewing our WordFly integration in relation to handling response codes. I'd like to know how other organizations handle soft bounces. Do your soft bounces eventually turn into a hard bounce? If so how long do you wait? Is there anything you specifically do with your soft bounces? I appreciate any discussion or opinions. thanks!! This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Marketing Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Marketing forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!
Thank you Alex. The issue of spam traps is the primary issue we want to avoid.
From: Tessitura Marketing Forum [mailto:forums-marketing@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Alexandra Barber Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 8:15 AM To: Randall A. Mitchell Subject: RE: [Tessitura Marketing Forum] "Best Practices" for Soft Bounces
Hi Brooke,
I'm interested in giving that a go here, too. Would you mind sharing the code that you use? I guessing it is in TR_FLEX_HEADER_ELEMENT?
Thanks!
Jenny Graf, UMS
Hi Jenny
We use a custom header rather than the flex header.
So we first grab the primary email address
select @eaddress=address from T_EADDRESSwhere customer_no = @customer_noand primary_ind = 'Y'
select hardbounce=case when exists (select 1 from T_PROMOTION (NOLOCK) where response=9 and customer_no=@customer_no and eaddress=@eaddress having COUNT(*)>2 ) then 'Y' else 'N' end
So we check for 3 or more hard bounces recorded against the primary email address for the customer and return a Y if this is the case, then use logic in Infomaker to format the primary email address in the header with strikethrough.
Here is the code a a single statement with @customer_no
select hardbounce=case when exists (select 1 from T_PROMOTION p (NOLOCK) join T_EADDRESS e (NOLOCK) on p.customer_no=e.customer_no and p.eaddress=e.address and e.primary_ind = 'Y' where p.response=9 and p.customer_no=@customer_no having COUNT(*)>2 ) then 'Y' else 'N' end
Hope that helps
Mark