Summary
Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) employs a nuanced system for handling email bounces, distinguishing between hard and soft bounces to protect sender reputation and optimize deliverability. Unlike some platforms that might immediately suppress an address after a single hard bounce, SFMC's default logic can be more lenient, leading to confusion among users.
This approach aims to balance list hygiene with avoiding the premature removal of valid, temporarily unreachable subscribers. However, this flexibility means marketers must actively manage their bounce settings to align with best practices and maintain strong sender reputation and email deliverability. Understanding SFMC's specific rules and implementing proactive bounce management strategies are crucial for effective email campaigns.
Key findings
- SFMC Bounce Logic: Salesforce Marketing Cloud typically classifies an email address as undeliverable after at least three bounces, with at least two weeks passing between the first and third bounce. This applies to both soft and hard bounces, though the treatment of hard bounces is often the area of contention.
- Hard vs. Soft Bounces: While soft bounces are temporary delivery failures (e.g., full inbox), hard bounces signify a permanent issue (e.g., invalid address). Best practices dictate that hard bounces should be removed from mailing lists immediately to preserve sender reputation.
- Default Settings: SFMC's default setting for hard bounces is not always one and done, meaning an email address might receive multiple hard bounce attempts before being marked as undeliverable.
- Subscriber Status: When an address reaches the bounce threshold, SFMC typically changes its status to held or inactive, not unsubscribed.
Key considerations
- Customizing Hard Bounce Logic: Marketers should consider submitting a ticket to Salesforce to configure their account to immediately remove (or set to held) subscribers after the first hard bounce. This proactive measure is vital for maintaining a clean list and good sender reputation.
- Monitoring Bounce Rates: Regularly review bounce reports within SFMC to identify patterns and root causes. High bounce rates can indicate issues with list quality or content that may lead to being placed on an email blocklist (or blacklist).
- List Hygiene: Implement continuous list cleaning practices, including the removal of inactive subscribers and invalid addresses. Utilizing email validation workflows before sending can significantly reduce bounces.
- Understanding SFMC Statuses: Familiarize yourself with the various subscriber statuses in SFMC, such as active, bounced, and held, to accurately interpret delivery issues and manage your audience.
What email marketers say
Email marketers frequently discuss Salesforce Marketing Cloud's bounce management, often highlighting the nuances and frustrations related to its default settings. While SFMC offers powerful automation and segmentation tools, its standard bounce handling logic can sometimes deviate from industry best practices, particularly concerning hard bounces. Marketers emphasize the importance of understanding these intricacies and taking proactive steps to ensure optimal email deliverability and maintain a clean subscriber list.
Key opinions
- Confusing Default Logic: Many marketers find SFMC's default bounce logic, particularly for hard bounces, counterintuitive. The system might continue attempting delivery to a permanently bounced address for a period, which goes against the common one-and-done approach.
- Impact on Reputation: Repeatedly sending to bounced email addresses can negatively impact a sender's reputation, increasing the risk of emails landing in spam folders or getting blocklisted (blacklisted).
- Proactive Adjustments: Marketers often advise others to proactively adjust SFMC's bounce settings, especially for hard bounces, to ensure immediate suppression and better list hygiene.
- Subscriber Status Nuances: It is important to note that a bounced subscriber is typically marked as inactive or held, not unsubscribed, which can affect segmentation and reporting.
Key considerations
- Ticket Submission for Hard Bounces: Marketers using SFMC should consider opening a support ticket to modify their account's hard bounce logic to suppress addresses after the first hard bounce. This is a crucial step that SFMC support can implement.
- Regular List Cleansing: Beyond SFMC's automated bounce handling, manually reviewing and removing consistently bouncing or inactive subscribers is a best practice. This helps maintain a healthy list and improves overall deliverability, reducing the chance of hitting spam traps.
- Understanding Bounce Types: It's essential to differentiate between hard and soft bounces, as their implications for deliverability and list management are distinct. A hard bounce requires immediate action.
- Reporting and Analysis: Leverage SFMC's reporting tools to monitor bounce rates and types. Analyze this data to uncover root causes, such as invalid email addresses or content issues, and adjust strategies accordingly.
Email marketer from Email Geeks indicates that Salesforce Marketing Cloud's bounce handling policy is a common point of confusion. They were told that daily bounces over two weeks might not lead to an undeliverable status, but three bounces within two weeks would, if memory serves correctly. This policy seems counterintuitive compared to typical bounce management practices.
Marketer from Email Uplers emphasizes that hard bounces necessitate immediate removal from the email list, as sending to them again is detrimental. This ensures proper list hygiene and prevents further damage to sender reputation.
What the experts say
Deliverability experts emphasize that effective bounce management is critical for maintaining a healthy sender reputation and achieving strong inbox placement. They generally advocate for aggressive handling of hard bounces, often recommending immediate removal, while acknowledging that soft bounces may warrant a more lenient, temporary suppression approach. The challenge lies in accurately classifying bounces and implementing a system that intelligently responds to different bounce types to minimize negative impacts on deliverability.
Key opinions
- Standard Bounce Management: Most industry standards dictate bounce management based on a specific number of bounces over a defined period, rather than indefinite sending to a bouncing address.
- Immediate Hard Bounce Removal: Experts strongly recommend that hard bounces should result in immediate suppression of the email address from further mailings. This one-and-done policy prevents damage to sender reputation.
- Scalpel vs. Hammer Approach: Effective bounce management requires a precise, nuanced approach (a scalpel) rather than a blunt, generic one (a hammer), which many ESPs (including SFMC) may offer by default.
- The Three Bounce, Two Week Rule: A common specific rule used by platforms like SFMC is to mark an address as held or undeliverable after at least three bounces, with a minimum of two weeks passing between the first and third bounce, regardless of daily or weekly sending frequency.
Key considerations
- Accurate Bounce Classification: It is crucial to correctly distinguish between hard bounces and soft bounces to apply appropriate suppression policies. Misclassifying can lead to either unnecessary list shrinking or persistent deliverability issues.
- Configuring ESP Settings: Even if an ESP has a default policy, organizations should actively seek to customize their settings to align with best practices, especially for hard bounces. This often involves engaging with support or advanced configuration options. For example, understanding how to manage bounce responses is key.
- Balancing Suppression and List Size: While immediate suppression of hard bounces is ideal, some ESPs (like SFMC) opt for a more lenient approach to avoid needlessly killing customer list sizes due to temporary server issues. Marketers must strike a balance that prioritizes deliverability without overly aggressive list trimming.
- Reputation Management: Sending to invalid addresses, even temporarily, signals poor list hygiene to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which can lead to negative bounce domain reputation and placement on blocklists.
Expert from Email Geeks states that the general rule for bounce management is based on a certain number of bounces occurring within a specific timeframe. They offer to conduct training on how ESPs should ideally handle bounces and the underlying reasons, highlighting its complexity.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests that the initial statement about SFMC's bounce logic sounds incorrect. They clarify that if the rule is "3 consecutive times within 3 weeks" for soft bounces, it would be more understandable. Hard bounces, conversely, should be removed immediately from mailing lists.
What the documentation says
Official Salesforce Marketing Cloud documentation and related resources detail the system's automated bounce handling mechanisms and the implications of different bounce types. They explain how SFMC categorizes bounces and subsequently manages subscriber statuses, aiming to balance deliverability optimization with list integrity. The documentation also provides guidance on best practices for marketers to complement SFMC's built-in features for comprehensive bounce management.
Key findings
- Automatic Status Changes: SFMC automatically adjusts subscriber statuses based on detected bounce patterns, moving them to a bounced or held status after a certain threshold of delivery failures.
- Bounce Classifications: Bounces are categorized by ISPs and SFMC, with hard bounces (permanent failures) typically requiring different handling than soft bounces (temporary issues).
- Reporting and Analytics: SFMC provides tools and reports, such as the Email Bounce Report, to help users review who, when, and why prospects bounced, aiding in root cause analysis.
- Suppression Lists: Documentation confirms that SFMC supports the creation and management of suppression lists to prevent sending emails to specific addresses, including those that have consistently bounced or unsubscribed.
Key considerations
- Customizing Bounce Behavior: While SFMC has default rules, documentation implies that advanced configurations or support requests might be necessary to adjust how specific bounce types, especially hard bounces, are handled to align with more aggressive suppression policies.
- Regular Data Management: Documentation reinforces the need for ongoing list cleaning to remove invalid or inactive addresses. This practice reduces bounce rates and improves overall deliverability and sender reputation.
- Understanding Subscriber States: A clear understanding of subscriber statuses, such as Active, Bounce, and Held, is essential for effective list segmentation and campaign planning.
- Utilizing Automation: SFMC's automation features, such as Exit on Hard Bounce, are available to help automate the suppression process, reducing manual effort and improving compliance with deliverability best practices.
Documentation from Trailhead suggests that activating the "Exit on Hard Bounce" and "Exit on Soft Bounce" automations is a recommended practice. These features allow for better management and reporting on email cadences within Salesforce Marketing Cloud, ensuring timely suppression.
Documentation from Digital Marketing on Cloud explains that SFMC automatically adjusts subscriber statuses based on bounce patterns. For instance, if a subscriber consistently bounces, SFMC will update their status accordingly to prevent continued sending, which helps maintain list integrity and deliverability.
