“…Can GroupMail automatically remove bounced email addresses from my mailing list?..”

 

YES, it certainly can!

The Subscriber Add-on allows you to automatically remove invalid, undeliverable or bounced email addresses from your mailing list. It does this by checking your incoming mail server for emails returned by recipient mail servers based on their subject lines and then extracting the email addresses from the bounced messages and either;

  1. excluding these addresses from future mailings, or
  2. removing the recipients from the Group(s) altogether based on the actions that you configure, or
  3. a Stored Procedure can be specified to handle the bounced messages.

When an email to a recipient bounces back to you, it is not always desirable to remove it from your mailing list immediately. The message may have been returned because of a temporary problem (i.e. mailbox full, mail server/internet connectivity downtime, etc.)

With this in mind, Subscriber allows you to specify the number of bounced messages that need to occur before the recipient is excluded or deleted; giving you complete control over your bounce management strategy.

There are a number of Bounce Rules pre-installed in Subscriber which will identify the majority of bounced messages that are returned from mail servers. The bounces are generally identified by the contents of the subject line. For example, the highlighted rule in the first image below identifies a bounced message as one which contains “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender” in the subject line. As such, Subscriber will treat it as a bounce.

There are two types of bounces that are recognized by Subscriber:

  • Hard Bounce type indicates that the non-delivery of the message is caused by a potentially permanent problem (for example email account / user no longer exists).
  • Soft Bounce type indicates that there is a temporary problem delivering the email (for example Mailbox is Full).

 

To change an existing bounce rule, simply highlight the rule in the list, and choose Modify. Similarly, to remove a bounce rule simply highlight the rule and click Delete. You can also create any number of new rules as required to satisfy your particular configuration and strategy.

To configure how Bounces are handled, go to the Tools Menu, Manage Bounces.

Remove Bounces using GroupMail

Subscriber allows recipients to be deleted or excluded after a certain number (or threshold) of bounces occur. In the figure above, the recipient details will be deleted from all groups if either 1 hard bounce or 4 soft bounce occurs. You can change these values as you desire.  However, I always recommend to Customers to set the Hard Bounces to 1.

  • Exclude Recipients: Check this option to add the bounced email address to the exclusion list.
  • Remove Bounced Recipients from All Groups: Tick this option if you want recipient details to be deleted from all groups, when the bounce threshold is reached.
  • Execute Stored Procedure: Check this option to specify a stored procedure to handle updating your database with bounce details when the threshold is reached.

 

You can also identify “Friendly” emails that you know are valid but which might have technical issues during sending so that those addresses won’t be affected by the rules you specify.

You can also configure GroupMail Subscriber Add-on to remove opt-out and unsubscribe email requests.

As always, if you have any questions or need some help along the way, don’t hesitate to contact our technical support team

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