Overview of email-related events
Batch applies a series of rules designed to preserve your sender reputation, help with list hygiene, and comply with your obligations as a sender.
During the lifecycle of a subscriber, several events can occur:
Bounces: Feedback Batch receives from mailbox providers indicating that an email couldn't be delivered
Spam complaints: Feedback Batch receives from mailbox providers when recipients mark an email as spam
Unsubscribes: Requests coming from unsubscribe mechanisms available in your email (unsubscribe link or unsubscribe button)
All these events are logged and displayed in your campaigns/automations statistics. They can be exported using the Profiles API export capabilities:
Bounces
Email messages transit from the Mail Transfer Agent server (Batch) to the mailbox provider's servers (e.g. Gmail) using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
When an error occurs, the mailbox provider returns a bounce message with additional details explaining why the email couldn't be delivered.
There are three common categories of bounces:
→ Soft bounces
Soft bounces are temporary delivery failures that can happen for various reasons:
Misconfigured/unreachable inbound server
Inbox full (or over quota)
24 hours of failed delivery due to rate limiting
And more
Batch policy:
Inbox full: Batch will consider a recipient permanently unreachable after 5 consecutive bounces due to a full inbox from different campaigns/automations. The email address will be added to the suppression list and excluded from future marketing communication.
Other soft bounces: Batch will retry reaching the inbound email server after a soft bounce to confirm the email cannot be delivered.
→ Hard bounces
Hard bounces are permanent delivery failures. Batch receives hard bounces in cases of:
Invalid email addresses (mistyped or nonexistent)
Deleted or deactivated email accounts
Domains that no longer exist
Blocked sending domains due to invalid or inactive email addresses
Batch Policy: The bounced recipients will be permanently excluded from your marketing and transactional communications.
→ Block bounces
A block bounce occurs when an email server refuses to accept the message due to policy or reputation issues. This is usually caused by:
Poor sender reputation
IP address or domain blacklisting
Content identified as spam
Authentication failures (missing or incorrect SPF, DKIM, or DMARC records)
Rate limiting (sending too many emails too quickly)
Policy blocks (the receiving server has specific rules against your type of email)
Batch policy: Block bounces do not cause an addition to the suppression list or an unsubscribe. Batch will retry sending the email for 24 hours, then categorize these emails as soft bounces.
User interactions
Batch also processes automatically negative user interactions to protect your domain reputation and exclude these recipients from future emails.
Here is an overview of the existing flows:
→ Spam complaints
Batch automatically processes negative user interactions to protect your domain reputation and exclude affected recipients from future emails.
A spam complaint occurs when an email recipient marks a message as spam in their email client. Recipients may flag emails as spam based on their personal judgment of the content, frequency, or relevance of the messages they receive.
Batch receives the email addresses tied to spam complaints through inbox providers' feedback loops (FBLs, see more here).
Batch policy: Recipients who complain are unsubscribed from future marketing communications as soon as Batch receives feedback from a mailbox provider.
→ Unsubscribes
Recipients can unsubscribe in two ways:
By clicking the unsubscribe link included in marketing communications
By clicking the unsubscribe button in their email client (which triggers a "list-unsubscribe")
Batch policy: Recipients are unsubscribed in near real-time, as soon as they unsubscribe using either method described above. Note that a recipient can re-subscribe after unsubscribing.