Bounces and Complaints
Every email you send produces a result. Most are delivered, but some bounce, and now and then a recipient complains by reporting your message as spam. Mumara ONE processes all of these for you, updates the contacts involved and stops you from mailing addresses you shouldn't.
There are no bounce mailboxes, bounce rules or feedback loops to configure in Mumara ONE. Bounces come back through the bounce domain you publish for each sending domain (see Sending Domains), and complaints arrive through the feedback loops Mumara ONE is registered with. Everything is processed automatically.
Bounces
A bounce is a message the recipient's mail server refused. Whether the server rejects the message straight away or sends a bounce message back later, Mumara ONE records it, decides whether it's hard or soft, and updates the contact shortly afterwards.
| Type | What it means | What happens to the contact |
|---|---|---|
| Hard bounce | A permanent failure. Sending again won't work, for example because the mailbox or the domain doesn't exist. | Marked Hard Bounced and left out of all your future campaigns |
| Soft bounce | A failure that may clear, for example a full mailbox, or a message that couldn't be delivered before its retry time ran out | Marked Soft Bounced. The contact keeps receiving your campaigns. |
The contact's status shows in the Bounced column under Contacts → View/Search Contacts.
A message the receiving server asks to "try again later" isn't a bounce. It's delayed and retried automatically, and only becomes a soft bounce if it still can't be delivered when its retry time runs out. See Queues.
How hard and soft are decided
Mumara ONE classifies each bounce from the status code the receiving server returned, such as 5.1.1 for an unknown user:
- Most permanent (
5.x.x) codes count as hard. That includes unknown users and domains, and also many policy rejections (5.7.x), which receiving servers use when they block mail. - Temporary failures, and a few permanent codes that usually clear by themselves, count as soft. A full mailbox (
5.2.2) is the most common.
Because many policy rejections count as hard, a block at one mailbox provider can mark valid contacts as Hard Bounced. If you see a burst of hard bounces at one provider, open Analytics → Bounce and read the Details column. If it describes a block or a reputation problem rather than a missing mailbox:
- Fix the cause first, and contact Mumara support if the block is on a Dedicated IP.
- Then reset only those contacts: select them under Contacts → View/Search Contacts and choose Bulk Actions → Set as Not Bounced, or open a contact and set Bounced to Not Bounced.
Only reset addresses you're confident are real. Mailing genuinely dead addresses again harms your reputation.
Soft bounces that never clear
A contact stays Soft Bounced however many times it soft-bounces, and keeps receiving your campaigns. From time to time, review contacts that are soft-bouncing campaign after campaign. An address that has bounced for months is effectively dead, so mark it Set as Hard Bounced or delete it.
Complaints
A complaint is a recipient reporting your message as spam, for example with the Report spam or Junk button. Mailbox providers that run a feedback loop send each complaint back to the sender. Mumara ONE is registered with the feedback loops of the major mailbox providers, receives the reports, and matches each one to the message and the account it came from.
When a complaint arrives for a marketing email:
- The contact is marked as having complained, shown as Spammed, and is never mailed from that list again. A complaint can't be undone.
- The complaint counts towards your complaint rate, which Mumara ONE watches closely. See Sending Reputation.
For transactional email, the complaint is recorded and counted, but nothing changes in your lists, because transactional messages aren't tied to contacts.
Some of the largest providers, including Gmail, don't send individual complaints back. Your real complaint rate can therefore be higher than what you see in Mumara ONE. To see Gmail's view, verify your sending domain in Google Postmaster Tools, which shows the spam rate Gmail measures for your domain.
Unsubscribes
Recipients can unsubscribe in two ways:
- The unsubscribe link in the message. It opens a page that asks them to confirm.
- The mailbox provider's own Unsubscribe button, which uses one-click unsubscribe. See One-click unsubscribe.
Either way, the contact is marked Unsubscribed on the list the message was sent to, straight away, and isn't mailed from that list again.
Which contacts are left out of your campaigns
When a campaign is prepared, and again just before each message is sent, Mumara ONE leaves out any contact that:
| Status | Column in the contacts table | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| Hard bounced | Bounced | Mumara ONE, or you |
| Unsubscribed | Unsubscribed | The recipient, or you |
| Complained | Spammed | Mumara ONE |
| Suppressed | Suppressed | A suppression list entry |
| Inactive | Active | You |
The contacts table under Contacts → View/Search Contacts shows Bounced and Unsubscribed by default. When you view a list's contacts, you can add Spammed, Suppressed and Active with Prioritize Columns.
If you switch on Skip unconfirmed when you schedule a campaign, contacts who haven't confirmed their subscription are left out too. See Compliance.
Statuses belong to one list
A contact is one address on one list. If the same person is on several of your lists, a bounce, a complaint or an unsubscribe only changes the contact on the list the message was sent to. They can still be mailed from your other lists.
That's usually what you want for unsubscribes, since someone may leave one newsletter and keep another. When a person should get nothing from you at all, for example after a complaint or a request to stop all email, add them to Email Suppression with Global selected, as described below.
Suppression lists
Suppression lists are your own do-not-mail lists. You find them under Lists → Suppression:
| List | What it blocks |
|---|---|
| Email Suppression | Individual email addresses |
| Domain Suppression | Every address at a domain, such as example.com |
| IP Suppression | Contacts who engage with your email from an IP address, subnet or range you list, such as 203.0.113.0/24 |
Each entry is either:
- Global, which covers every list in your account, or
- tied to one list, shown in the Associated List column, which covers only that list.
An email or domain entry matches the contacts you already have and the ones you add later, whether by import, web form, the API or by hand. An IP entry takes effect when a contact opens or clicks from that address. Matching contacts show as Suppressed and are left out of your campaigns.
Add entries
- Go to Lists → Suppression and open Email Suppression, Domain Suppression or IP Suppression.
- Click Add New.
- Under Select List (Contact List for IP suppression), choose Global or a single list.
- Add the entries. For email addresses and domains, choose a Source: upload a CSV file with one entry per line, or type or paste them in. For IP suppression, enter single IPs, subnets or a range.
- Enter a Reference, a short note on why these entries are suppressed, such as
complaint via support. - Click Import for email addresses and domains, or Submit for IP addresses.
Domain suppression matches the exact domain: suppressing example.com doesn't cover addresses at mail.example.com.
Remove entries
Delete an entry from its list to release the contacts it matched. You can delete a single entry, or every entry that shares the same Reference. Released contacts are mailed again, unless they've bounced, complained or unsubscribed.
Export
Click Export all on Email Suppression or Domain Suppression to download the list. The file appears under Tools → Exported Files.
Where suppression entries come from
Most entries are ones you add. A contact can also show as Suppressed because of an entry Mumara's team added for your account, for example after a recipient reported your email to Mumara's abuse team and asked not to be mailed again.
Transactional email
Bounce, complaint and unsubscribe statuses, and the suppression lists, apply to marketing email sent to your lists. Transactional email sent through a Bridge goes to whatever address your application gives it.
Bounces and complaints on transactional email are still recorded and count towards your reputation, so your application should stop sending to addresses that hard-bounce or complain. Listen for bounce and complaint events with a webhook, or check Analytics → Bounce and Analytics → Complaints.
Where to see bounces and complaints
| Where | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Analytics → Bounce | Every bounce, marketing and transactional, with its code, category and the receiving server's reason |
| Analytics → Complaints | Every complaint, with the message the recipient reported |
| Delivery Logs | The delivery record of each message, to look up a single recipient |
| Broadcast Stats | Bounces and complaints for each campaign you've sent |
| Contacts → View/Search Contacts | Each contact's status, such as Bounced and Unsubscribed |
| Webhooks | Bounce and complaint events sent to your own system as they happen |
Common questions
Do I need to set up a bounce mailbox or bounce rules?
No. Mumara ONE has no bounce mailboxes or bounce rules for you to manage. Publish the bounce domain records for each sending domain and bounces are processed for you.
A contact complained by mistake. Can I mail them again?
Not from the same list: a complaint is permanent. If the person asks to receive your email again, have them sign up again, ideally through a web form that asks them to confirm.
Why was a contact on another list still mailed after they unsubscribed?
Unsubscribes apply to the list the message was sent to. Add the address to Email Suppression with Global selected to stop all mail to it.
Should I delete bounced and complaining contacts?
You don't have to: they're left out of your campaigns anyway, and keeping them keeps a record of why. If you do delete them, add the complainers to Email Suppression first. A suppression entry also matches contacts added later, so a future import can't bring them back.
Related pages
- Sending Reputation: what Mumara ONE watches and the actions it can take
- Compliance: consent, unsubscribes and the rules for commercial email
- Bounces and Complaints in Analytics