Configuring bounced email monitoring

When an email cannot be delivered successfully, an automatic reply informing about the problem is returned (bounced) back to the sender. Tracking bounced emails allows the system to identify email addresses that do not correctly receive marketing emails. Removing invalid addresses from your mailing lists saves bandwidth and improves the accuracy of your subscription statistics, leading to a better delivery rate.

If the number of bounces counted for a recipient reaches a certain limit, the system automatically blocks the corresponding address from receiving any further marketing emails.

To configure bounced email monitoring:

  1. Open the Settings application and navigate to On-line marketing.

  2. Ensure that the Enable on-line marketing setting is enabled for your website.

  3. Select the On-line marketing -> Email marketing category of the settings.

  4. Enable Monitor bounced emails.

  5. Set up the other settings in the Bounced emails and POP3 settings sections:

    Bounced emails

    Bounced email address

    The address to which bounced emails are sent when the delivery of a marketing email to a recipient fails. If set, this address is used in the From field of marketing emails.

    Bounced email limit

    Sets the amount of bounced emails that can be counted for a recipient before the system blocks them from receiving further marketing emails. This limit is set for all email feeds under the selected site.

    If you enter 0, the system never blocks recipients automatically.

    Block recipients globally

    If checked, the system uses shared bounce counters for all recipients that have the same email address. This is applied across all sites in the system.

    Note: This setting does not ensure consistency between the bounce counts of all recipients with a shared address, only that new bounces will be added to all of them.

    This field is only available when defining global settings, i.e. when the (global) option is selected from the Site drop-down list.

    POP3 settings

    Server name

    Sets the address of the mail server where the bounced emails are stored. POP3 is used to check the server and monitor bounced emails.

    Server port

    Specifies the number of the port used to connect to the mail server.

    User name

    Sets the user name used for authentication against the mail server.

    Password

    Sets the password used for authentication against the mail server.

    Use SSL

    Indicates whether the connection to the mail server should be secured using SSL.

    Authentication method

    Specifies the authentication method used for the connection to the mail server. Options includebasicuser nameand password authentication and several challenge‑response mechanisms.

    The Auto option uses APOP if supported by the server and plain textuser name and password authentication otherwise.

  6. Click Save.

Some mail servers may be configured to store emails even after they are downloaded, which causes the system to count bounces multiple times (every time the mailbox is checked). You need to adjust the settings of the email server if you experience issues of this type.

After you enable and configure bounced email monitoring, the system periodically checks the mailbox where the bounced emails are stored. All contained emails are analyzed and the bounce counter of recipients is increased as needed. After a bounced email is processed, it is deleted from the mailbox. This functionality is ensured by the Check bounced emails scheduled task, which runs once per hour by default.