Bounces and suppression lists

When an email message can't be delivered, the mailbox provider sends Blackbaud's email system a code combination of numbers and text to indicate a soft or hard failure.

In Core, Communication, Bounces, you can view a list of users with email addresses that bounced, whether the email addresses are suppressed, the addresses, and how many times they bounced. Use this list to manage bounces and Edit email addresses used for communication.

Tip: If an email address is used as a user's Blackbaud ID username, refer to Manage authentication for a ingle user .

To maintain favorable reputations with mailbox providers, our system reviews recipient lists and automatically suppresses email addresses for the following reasons:

  • Hard bounces — When email delivery fails, mailbox providers send bounce code responses. The system categorizes and tracks these bounce codes so that it can suppress email addresses when they fail, such as when a recipient's address is invalid or their account is closed.

  • SPAM complaints — Our email specialists help maintain Feedback Loop (FBL) agreements with mailbox providers that offer FBL programs. With an FBL agreement, a mailbox provider agrees to inform us when a recipient marks a message as unsolicited — such as when they select a "This is SPAM" button or link — so that our system can suppress their email address from future mailings from that sender.

    Note: For most Blackbaud products, when a recipient marks an email as SPAM, Blackbaud doesn't suppress their address for other organizations. However, SPAM complaints for messages from Education Management extend to all organizations who use the product.

  • Opt-out links — When a recipient uses a legally required opt-out link in a mssage to request removal from emails, our system suppresses their address from future mailings specific to their request, such as only for a particular newsletter or all emails from a school.

Hard bounce failures occur when mailbox providers reject email messages.

To ensure a positive sender reputation, our system automatically suppresses email addresses that return hard bounces from future mailings.

They can occur for multiples reasons, such as:

  • Address errors

  • Bad domain names

  • Unknown users

  • Closed accounts

  • Suppressions

Soft bounce failures occur when email messages are processed by recipient mailbox providers but are returned as undeliverable before they reach their recipients. They can occur for multiple reasons, such as:

  • Mailbox is full

  • Inactive account

  • Temporary block

  • Technical failure

Soft bounces are a normal part of bulk email sending because mailbox providers can defer messages if they are unable to process them during the initial attempts at delivery.

Manage bounces

When email delivery fails, mailbox providers send bounce code responses. The system categorizes and tracks these bounce codes so that it can suppress email addresses when they fail, such as when a recipient's address is invalid or their mailbox is full.

When an email address hard bounces, our system suppresses it after the first failure. When an address soft bounces, the system suppresses it after it fails the number of times you specify under Communication, Bounces, Parameters.

To alert you when it’s time to follow up with a user for their current email address, you can set the number of soft failures to allow before our system suppresses them.

Note: To ensure a positive sender reputation, our system automatically suppresses email addresses that return hard bounces from future mailings after the first failure.

From Core, Communication, Bounces, select Parameters and enter the maximum number. After an email address returns the number of soft failures you enter, it’s marked “bad” in the Bounces list.

After you confirm an email address is valid or receive a current address from a user, you can remove the bounced address from the suppression list in one of these ways:

  • From Core, Communication, Bounces, select the highlighted check under Bad or enter the new address under Email.

  • From Core, use the People finder to search for and open the user’s profile. Under Contact Card, Digital, select Edit and update the address under Email. Also, remove the selection for Bad Email and then select Save.

  • From Core, System tools, Data refresh a data manager can import a file to quickly update the email addresses and clear the Bad Email field for existing users.

To understand why messages to an email address failed delivery, you can view the bounce details. From Core, Communication, Bounces, select the number under Bounces for the email address to review. From the list, you can view when messages failed delivery, whether they were permanent failures, the type of message, and why they failed.