automatic bounce management
Repeated sending to incorrect/inactive recipients is considered “spammer behavior.”
RealSender’s “copymail” app handles this automatically and transparently.
The receiver will only see the original sender, who will continue to receive replies from the recipients.
Email messages contain a header that remains invisible to the recipient. It’s called “Return-Path” and allows error messages to be sent to another email address.
Copymail automatically populates it with valuable information that, in addition to allowing them to be received, will also allow it to determine which list the message was sent from and which email address generated the error.
Below is an example of the header inserted in a message,
sent from the “test” list to the recipient "wrong.address@customer.com":
Return-Path: <test-bounces+wrong.address=customer.com@mXXX-realsender.com>
The application identifies two types of errors:
hard bounce (status-code 5.XXX.XXX): the email address generated a permanent error
such as “550 5.1.1 … User unknown” or “5.1.2 … Host unknown”
A permanent error indicates that you should never send to that recipient again.
soft bounce (status-code 4.XXX.XXX): the email address generated a temporary error
such as “452 4.2.2 … Mailbox full”
A transient error indicates that you can retry delivery in the future.
Here’s a brief description of how automatic bounce management works:
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After three hard bounces (permanent error, e.g., “user unknown”) or six soft bounces (temporary error, e.g., “mailbox full”), the recipient is blocked and a checkmark is added under the “nomail” column in the subscriber list.
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Once the recipient is blocked, three “Your subscription to the list … has been disabled” messages are sent before the recipient is removed from the list.
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When the recipient is removed from the list, the administrator receives an email notification.
Note: Only one error per day affects the subscriber’s score, so even if ten bounces are received in the same day, the score will only increase by one.
All these operations may seem simple and manageable even manually by an operator.
This is only possible with very small numbers, up to a few hundred recipients.
On average, about 20% of sent messages are bounced back.
For every 1,000 emails, about 200 are bounced,
which become unmanageable without the help of an automated system.