A “bounce” email is an email message that was not delivered to its recipient properly, and was then returned to the original sender. This typically happens when an email address or domain name doesn’t exist, or the email inbox of the recipient was full or offline. Active Campaign’s Email Marketing software provides automatic bounce email processing. This feature will track which emails “bounced” in each of your campaigns, and this feature can even automatically remove any subscriber who has bounced too many times. This is a very valuable feature, as it can help keep your subscriber list clean, and free of old or non-working email addresses. You can also view reports to see which of your subscribers did not receive your message, and why.
There are three methods of dealing with bounced emails as the result of sending a campaign:
- Extract from a POP3 email account
- PIPE email to a script
- Return to sender (this is the default options, and with this option enabled, bounces will not be tracked in the software)
Extracting Email From a POP Account
This is usually the easiest method of setting up bounce management. This method requires that you create an email account on your server, which is used only for processing bounces. Most users would create an email account such as “bounce@domain.com,” or “noreply@domain.com” for this purpose. All messages that bounce back from your campaigns will be sent to this bounce email address — and our software will periodically check the account, and clear out the bounces.
Once you have created a fully functional POP email account on your server (this can usually be done through your server’s control panel, or by your server admin), log in to your Email Marketing software. Click on Lists, and then click on Bounce Settings. On this page, you can choose to add a new bounce connection, or edit an existing one. On the add/edit page, make sure you select “Use POP3 Account.” When this option is selected, you will see the option to enter in your POP host name, user name, password, etc:
Once you have entered in your correct POP details, you can choose how many emails to process at one time. This number can usually be left at the default value — it represents how many emails should be checked and cleared from your POP account each time our software checks the account (you can define how frequently the account will be checked on the Scheduled Tasks page).
You can also choose how many times an address should soft bounce or hard bounce before being removed from your system. A soft bounce is usually a temporary error — for example, the email could not be delivered because the recipient’s inbox was full. A hard bounce is a permanent error — for example, the email could not be delivered because the recipient’s email address no longer exists.
If you have created more than one bounce connection in your software, you will also see the option to select which list(s) should use this specific bounce connection.
Important note: If you choose the POP method to manage your bounces, make sure that you have a cron job set up on your server, which runs the admin/cron.php file every 5 minutes. Without a cron job, your bounce emails will not be processed automatically. To read more about cron jobs, visit this article.
PIPE Bounce Method
This method is more advanced than the POP method, but it is also a more efficient way to handle bounces. With the PIPE method, your bounce email messages will be processed almost instantly, whereas the POP method usually requires that your cron job run a few times before all bounces appear on your campaign report.
The PIPE method requires that you create an email “forwarder” or “alias” on your server, used only for bounces, where all emails sent to that specific email address (for example, “bounce@domain.com”) are forwarded to a PHP script included in our software: admin/pipe_bounce.php.
Setting up an email forwarder is different for every mail server, and it can sometimes be done through CPanel as well. It is recommended that you contact your server admin for assistance with setting up email piping. For more information on how to set up an email alias/fowarder for various different mail servers, please refer to this article.
Once you have set up this forwarder on your server, simply log in to the Email Marketing software, edit or add a new bounce setting connection, choose “Pipe from Email Address” as the bounce management method, and enter in your bounce email account.
Troubleshooting Bounce Management
“I am using a POP account, and my bounces are not appearing at all on my campaign reports.”
- Do you have bounce management set up for that particular list? Make sure that one of the bounce settings connections on your Lists -> Bounce Settings page is set up to be used in your specific list. If you only have one bounce setting connection — “Default” — then this will not be a problem.
- Make sure that your cron job is running on your server, every five minutes, without error.
- Make sure that bounces are not accumulating in the POP account faster than our software can clear them out. You can adjust how many emails are checked at one time by editing your bounce settings, and you can adjust how frequently the bounce account is checked on the Scheduled Tasks page.
- Do NOT use an email account for bounces that is being used for any other purpose. Make sure that your bounce email account is ONLY being used by our software to process bounces, and it is not being checked/cleared out by any other application or email client.
- Check to make sure your mail server is not stripping out or changing the Return-Path: message header from any of your outgoing emails.
- Make sure the file path that was set up in the forwarding script on your mail server is correct.
- Make sure that the pipe_bounce.php file is set to CHMOD 777 (or has full read/write permissions in a Windows environment).
- Check your mail server’s error logs and web server’s error logs for any signs of an error during processing.
- Check to make sure your mail server is not stripping out or changing the Return-Path: message header from any of your outgoing emails.
- If the bounce messages that are being sent to you do not contain a valid bounce code, they will not be processed by our software. To read more about why this happens and how to fix it, click here.
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