18/3/23, 7:24 Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails - Marketing Nation

Marketing Nation > Support > Knowledgebase > Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails  

Included in this article

Overview
Data you’ll get from Email Bounces
Bounce Categories
Hard Bounces
Soft Bounces
Bounce Details
Building the Directory
1. Create 6 custom fields
2. Create a Program to house everything
3. Create a Static List
4. Create two Smart Campaigns
Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details
Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries
5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details

Overview
Bounce activities carry details for why the email was bounced, but it’s housed within the activity log
entry, not in a field on the lead record, so it’s difficult to export that data. This article will show you
how to extract that information to create a directory of leads bouncing emails and how to make the
list automatically update. This will also create counters for bounces and successful re-deliveries after
bounces happen.

Data you’ll get from Email Bounces

Bounce Categories
Email bounces come in different types depending on why the email was bounced; Hard Bounces or
Soft Bounces.

Hard Bounces
Hard Bounces come in two types, Category 1 and Category 2.

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/tkb/articleprintpage/tkb-id/support_solutions-documents/article-id/3286 1/5
18/3/23, 7:24 Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails - Marketing Nation

Category 1 bounces are emails that have been marked as spam by the recipient mail server.
Many email servers monitor blacklists or spam traps, so after de-listing with them, leads that
have had a Category 1 bounce previously may be able to receive emails again.
Category 2 bounces occur due to an email address that is invalid or doesn’t exist.

Soft Bounces
Soft Bounces come in three different types, Categories 3, 4 or 9.
Category 3 bounces are usually temporary, caused by full mailboxes, timeouts, or throttling.
Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL).
Category 4 bounces are caused by technical problems, Transient Failures, Admin Failures, DNS
Failures. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL).
Category 9 bounces are unknown, undetermined or gibberish details. Any email with this
designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL).

Bounce Details
When an email is bounced, the recipient mail server includes details of why it was bounced. These
are created by the admin of the recipient mail server and vary greatly, but most will give some
explanation that can give valuable information. Email Bounce Codes

Building the Directory

1. Create 6 custom fields

You’ll need 6 custom fields, two DateTime fields, two Score fields, and two String fields
Name the DateTime fields “Bounce Date” and “Email Delivered After Bounce”.
Name the Score fields “Email Bounces” and “Deliveries After Bounces”
Name the String fields “Email Bounce Details” and “Email Bounce Category”

Directions for creating Custom Fields can be found here: Create a Custom Field in Marketo

2. Create a Program to house everything

Use a default program type and name it "Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails".
Info on creating programs can be found here: Create a Program

3. Create a Static List

This static list will be your actual directory that contains all of the leads that are currently bouncing
emails. Name it "Active Bounce List".
Info on creating a static list can be found here: Create a Static List

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/tkb/articleprintpage/tkb-id/support_solutions-documents/article-id/3286 2/5
18/3/23, 7:24 Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails - Marketing Nation

4. Create two Smart Campaigns

These two Smart Campaigns are what will be used to add and remove leads from your active
bounce list.
Info on creating Smart Campaigns can be found here: Create a New Smart Campaign

Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details

Your first Smart Campaign will be used to listen for any email bounces that occur. The campaign
will populate the “Bounce Date”, “Email Bounce Category” and “Email Bounce Details” fields. It
will then add one point to the “Email Bounces” score field which can be used to count how many
bounces have occurred per lead. Lastly, the campaign will add the lead to the static list which will
be an active directory of leads who are bouncing emails.

Campaign Smart List

Use the two triggers of “Email Bounces” and “Email Bounces Soft” in the Smart List. Set
both triggers to “is any” so that they will fire whenever any email bounces for any reason.

Campaign Flow
The Flow of the campaign will have 5 flow steps. The flow will use a System Token and
some Trigger Tokens, which can be used to pull details out of the action that activated the
trigger. In this case, the Trigger Tokens will be pulling out the details on why the emails were
bounced. That info is in the bounce message and is logged in the lead's activity log.
Normally you'd have to comb through the activity log one at a time to find these details for
each individual lead. This method, however, will pull the details out automatically for all
leads.

Flow Step 1: Change Data Value

Attribute: “Bounce Date”
New Value: {{system.dateTime}}

Flow Step 2: Change Data Value.

Attribute: “Email Bounce Category”
New Value: {{trigger.category}}

Flow Step 3: Change Data Value

Attribute: “Email Bounce Details”
New Value: {{trigger.details}}

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/tkb/articleprintpage/tkb-id/support_solutions-documents/article-id/3286 3/5
18/3/23, 7:24 Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails - Marketing Nation

Flow Step 4: Change Score

Score Name: “Email Bounces”
Change: +1

Flow Step 5: Add to List

List Name: “Active Bounce List”

Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries

Campaign Smart List

The Smart List of the campaign will need a trigger for “Email is Delivered” set to “is any” and
also a filter of “Member of List” looking just for leads that belong to your Static List. This
way, the campaign will only apply to leads who have had an email bounce but have then
had an email successfully delivered afterwards.

Campaign Flow
The Flow of the campaign will have 3 flow steps to do the following; log when the email
was delivered, add a point to the "Deliveries After Bounce" Score Field, and remove the lead
from the "Active Bounce List".

Flow Step 1: Change Data Value

Attribute: “Email Delivered After Bounce”
New Value: {{system.dateTime}}

Flow Step 2: Change Score

Score Name: “Deliveries After Bounces”
Change: +1

Flow Step 3: Remove from List

List Name: Operational.Active Bounce List

5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details

The custom fields you’ve created for email bounce information won’t show automatically in the
view of your list. You can create a new view of the list to show just this information so that when it
is exported it will give you only the email bounce information you need. Once the list has the

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/tkb/articleprintpage/tkb-id/support_solutions-documents/article-id/3286 4/5
18/3/23, 7:24 Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails - Marketing Nation

necessary details, it can be exported with those columns included so that you can work with it.
You can identify emerging trends and issues with your deliverability by looking for common
themes among the bounce details.
Directions for creating Custom Views can be found here

Tags (8)
bounce bounced email bounce email bounce categories email bounces hard bounce soft bounce
trigger token

82% helpful (9/11)

10

Was this article helpful? Yes No

27,590

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/tkb/articleprintpage/tkb-id/support_solutions-documents/article-id/3286 5/5