Bounce e-mail (sometimes referred to as bounce mail) is electronic mail that is returned to the sender because it cannot be delivered for some reason. Unless otherwise arranged, bounce e-mail usually appears as a new note in your inbox. E-mail users can encounter bounce e-mail because an addressee has changed his or her address, because their mail box is full, because the note is misaddressed, or for some other reason.
Bounce e-mail can be handled by a program when sending e-mail to a list and most e-mail distribution list vendors include this capability. Such a bounce handler can retry later, unsubscribe the addressee from the list, or take some other action.
Maxprog has developed eMail Bounce Handler, a bounce e-mail filtering and handling tool that recognizes bounce e-mails using a customizable set of rules and extracts the recipients addresses allowing you to use them again to try sending your mail or to take them off your list. eMail Bounce Handler simply connects to your pop mailbox in order to retrieve bounces letting any other message untouched. Once your mailbox is processed and all bounces removed from your server, you will get your list of "bad" e-mails addresses. Then you can export it in order to clean your original list or to try to send your mail again. If you use Maxprog Bulk Mailer*, you can name your file "Delete" and then drop it over MaxBulk Mailer recipient list . All addresses from the file will be removed from the list in a snap!
Note that as eMail Bounce Handler rules are fully customizable you can perfectly use this software to handle UNSUBSCRIBE requests as well.
Table of Contents
1. Getting Started
2. Settings
3. Edit the rules
4. Retrieving bounces
5. General Preferences
6. Using the Bounce list
7. Troubleshooting
8. Legal Disclaimer
1.- Getting Started
Launch eMail Bounce Handler. An untitled document is created. This document is made of 4 tab panels labeled, " Bounces", "Settings", "Rules" and "Log".
2.- Settings
Go to the "Settings" panel and create a POP account.
Enter your:
POP host: The POP server address associated to your e-mail account.
User ID: The ID you use in order to connect to your e-mail account.
Password: The password to access this POP account.
Note that you can create as many accounts as necessary using the account pull-down menu.
Check Remove bounces from server in order to remove bounces from your server once processed.
Set eventually a repeating scheduled connection from 1 to 60 minutes.
Set bounce limit value in order to auto-check extracted addresses for deletion/retry. (bellow)
3.- Edit the rules
14 rules are automatically added to the rules list at startup. You can easily add new ones, modify or delete them. This default rules cover 90% of bounce types.
All internet e-mails are made of 2 parts called Header (or Headers) and Body. Header contain sender and recipient addresses along with special information. Body part contains the message contents themselves. eMail Bounce Handler allows you to use either parts both for the rule and extraction.
Each rule takes a given message header from Subject, Sender, Body and Recipient, looks if it contains, is equal to, starts with or ends with a given text and finally extract e-mail addresses from the Entire Message, From or To header, all Headers or Message Body.
An incoming message will be treated as soon as at least one rule is met. All remaining rules will be discarded.
All rules can be activated/deactivated individually using their associated check boxes.
All rules can be activated/deactivated at once clicking on the Activate all rules check box.
You can force eMail Bounce Handler to process every incoming mails clicking on the Skip all rules check box.
3.- Retrieving Bounces
Make sure no e-mail software is running a scheduled POP connection to the mailbox you are using with Email Bounce Handler as it can interfere and prevent the software to work properly.
Click on the Connect button or check the scheduled connection box for an automatic repeating connection.
Once connected, eMail Bounce Handler will download all messages waiting on your mailbox and will check them with all activated rules if any. If at least one rule is met, the message is processed and recipient address is extracted and added to the bounce list.
Each list entry is made of a check box, a status icon, the extracted e-mail address, the subject of the bounce message and the message count. If the address is new, a new entry is created. If the address already exists, the count column on the right is updated showing you how many times the corresponding e-mail has been found.
If the bounce count reaches the limit set in the settings panel (bellow) the address is checked for deletion and icon is changed from a Warning to a Stop icon.
This means that when exporting your bounce list, these addresses will be added. This allows you to use the same list with several campaigns and delete only the addresses that are always bouncing. An address can bounce once on a campaign due to a temporal problem with recipient mail server (ex. recipient mailbox over quota).
However you can force eMail Bounce Handler to select all entries or select them depending on the bounce counter.
5.- General Preferences
General preferences allows you to modify default rules, that is the rules new documents will use by default. This rule editor works exactly the same way as the document one. You can also force eMail Bounce Handler to discard given e-mail addresses.
6.- Using the Bounce list
Once you have a Bounce list you can use it to clean your recipient list. To do so just save them to a file called DELETE and drop it over your list previously opened inside MaxBulk Mailer. As a result all the addresses will be removed from the list in one pass. Don't forget to save changes pushing MaxBulk Mailer save button.
7.- Troubleshooting
If you are having troubles getting started or using eMail Bounce Handler, feel free to ask us using our support inquiry form located at http://inquiry.maxprog.com/. Please be as descriptive as possible.
8.- Legal Disclaimer
BY USING THIS DOCUMENT, YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS PRESENTED BELOW:
Use the information contained in this document at your own risk. Under no circumstances, including negligence, shall Max Programming be liable for any incidental, special or consequential damages that result from the use of this document, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.
