Diagnosing false "bounces" from mass emailed announcements

May 6, 2009 3:31 PM

Which online emailing systems have the best record when it comes to avoiding false "bounces" and other technical glitches that can really screw up the ability to reach your audience?

My organization uses Constant Contact. Our messages regularly bounce back as "Non-existent Address" from addresses that are perfectly valid. In some cases, the addressee has actually confirmed having received the announcement. Neither the address, nor Constant Contact, has the time to figure out what's going wrong. The organization ends up not getting its announcements to the people we need to reach.

If there's something we're not doing right, tell us. If there's a more reliable system, say so. If there are some shortcut diagnostics we might try, help!

posted by John Borrowman to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Huh. Email bounces are actually a pretty complex are that I spent far too much time learning about at a past job. Exact Target may do a better job, though I've never used it directly.

Does CC not generate bounce reports with SMTP codes or some sort of summarized output? That's pretty weak. You should be able to get a per-bounce diagnosis of what the issue was. Most organizations have stopped generating "no such address" bounces as they're too useful for spammers to use to find good addresses.

There are dozens of mass email providers like CC out there though. Look at some Marketing Sherpa reports and see if you can find one that fits the bill better.
posted by GuyZero at 3:54 PM on May 6, 2009

I had a question (unrelated) about sending mass e-mails through our mail client, Magnet Mail. Their service is sub-par, so I e-mailed the question to Mail Chimp and got an answer in an hour or so, even though I’m not a customer. You might want to the same route.
posted by tenaciousd at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2009