Bounce Handling Scenario
You're a marketer for a company called Harvest Box: a meal-kit delivery service dedicated to bringing farm-fresh, seasonal ingredients and inspired recipes directly to your door. Your team is wrapping up your IP and domain warmup at Iterable, and in this activity, you'll get your bounce handling processes in place to ensure your sending reputation stays strong.
Get Started
Meet Mark
Mark is one of your teammates at Harvest Box, and he needs your help getting some bounce handling mechanisms in place. He'll be guiding you thoughout this activity. Throughout this exercise, if you need more context for a scenario, select the Mark's icon. Give it a try now:
Need more context?
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
90
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 90 days, they've had emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
36
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 90 days, they've had 36 emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
30
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 90 days, they've had 36 emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 30 days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
12
Great work! You helped us plan out our soft bounce policies! Now, can you help me get them set up in Iterable?
Continue
Need more context?
Build a dynamic list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! This criteria will ensure users are only in the segmentation if they have 12 or more bounces. Select Continue.
Select the criteria you need to ensure that users in the list have had 12 or more bounces.
Not quite! Users need to have 12 or more bounces to meet this criteria. While 12 bounces is the minimum number for our criteria, if anyone has had more than 12 bounces, we want them to be included as well. Try again!
Continue
Need more context?
Build a dynamic list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! This criteria will ensure users are only in the segmentation if they have 12 or more bounces within the last 30 days. Select Continue.
Select the criteria you need to ensure that users have bounced within the last 30 days.
Not quite! Users need to have bounced within the last 30 days. In other words, the email bounce date should be later than 30 days before now. Try again!
Continue
Need more context?
Build a dynamic list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! This criteria will ensure users are only in the segmentation if their 12 bounces in the last 30 days start with MailBlock. Select Continue.
Select the criteria you need to ensure that the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock"
Not quite! Remember what field in the bounce event will give you information about the category of bounce it is. Try again!
Continue
Need more context?
Build a list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! You finished the segmentation! This will return all users who are subscribed to the marketing channel and who have had 12 or more MailBlock bounces in the last 30 days. Don't forget to save it as a list!
Select the criteria you need to ensure users in this list aren't already unsubscribed from the marketing channel.
Not quite! Remember, we want users to be in this list only if they are not unsubscribed from the Marketing channel. Try again!
Great work! You created the dynamic list! Now, we need to create a journey to unsubscribe this list from the marketing channel regularly. Click continue to begin creating the journey.
Continue
Need more context?
Create a journey that will unsubscribe users on the "Consistent Soft Bouncers" list from the Email Marketing channel on a daily basis.
Begin by editing the Start tile.
Need more context?
Create a journey that will unsubscribe users on the "Consistent Soft Bouncers" list from the Email Marketing channel on a daily basis.
Select a tile to continue editing this journey.
Edit the Subscription Preferences tile.
Great work! Now we're set up to automatically unsubscribe consistent soft bouncers from our Email Marketing channels!
Oh no! It looks like one of our campaigns has a high bounce rate. Let's go check out the campaign to see what happened!
Go to Campaign
Need more context?
It looks like there's quite a few soft bounces and hard bounces! We're going to have to troubleshoot both. Select the type of bounce you want to start with.
Troubleshoot the high bounce rate for this campaign by finding more details about the breakdown of the bounce reasons.
There were so many hard bounces as a result of this campaign! Can you advise on what we should do about hard bounces?
Not quite! Hard bounces indicate you're sending to an invalid email address. Consider what Iterable does already to handle hard bounces and what you can do to prevent invalid email addresses.
Looks like all the soft bounces were due to users' mailboxes being full! Can you help advise on what we should do next about this?
Awesome! I will see where all these invalid emails are coming from and see if we want to use an email validator to minimize these in the future! Now, let's look at our soft bounces. Select the soft bounces to find out the reason for them.
Not quite! Remember that users with a mailbox full soft bounce don't have an invalid email, but it could suggest they are not actively using that mailbox. Try again!
Looks like all the soft bounces were due to users' mailboxes being full! Can you help advise on what we should do next about this?
Not quite! Remember that users with a mailbox full soft bounce don't have an invalid email, but it could suggest they are not actively using that mailbox. Try again!
Great work! Since there were so many soft bounces due to full mailboxes, maybe we should consider having a stricter soft bounce policy for those types of soft bounces. I'll work on that. In the meantime, let's go back to the hard bounces. Select Continue.
Continue
There were so many hard bounces for this campaign! Can you advise about what to do to address hard bounces?
Not quite! Hard bounces indicate you're sending to an invalid email address. Consider what Iterable does already to handle hard bounces and what you can do to prevent invalid email addresses.
Great work!
Now our HarvestBox team are all set up to manage our soft bounces with segmentation and journeys, and you've successfully helped us troubleshoot an ad hoc campaign with a high bounce rate. Thank you!
Restart Activity
Not quite!
We want this list to automatically filter user in and out of this list in real time, so it always includes users who are currently subscribed to the marketing channel and who have had 12 or more MailBlock bounces within the last 30 days from now. We need a different type of list. Try again!
Not quite!
This tile will help you remove or add users to Iterable lists, but not unsubscribe them to a channel. Try again!
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
- Users must have had 12 or more bounce events
- The bounce events must have occured in the last 30 days
- The type of bounce must start with "MailBlock"
- The user must not be unsubscribed from the email marketing channel
Not yet!
You will need to add the list here, but let's set the schedule first to make sure this list runs every day.
Choose the Time Window
You and your Harvest Box team decide that in general, you'd like to have a lenient policy for soft bounces, allowing more time for issues to resolve before you unsubscribe users from email marketing channels. Select the best time window to use for the segmentation criteria that Iterable would recommend to allow for the most leniency for soft bounces.
Not quite! There is a more lenient window of time you could use. Remember you want to allow more time for soft bounce issues to resolve. Try again!
Choose the Number of Bounces
On average, users receive 3 emails a week from Harvest Box. Harvest Box wants to find users who have bounced from all of the emails they've received in the last 90 days (about 12 weeks).Select the number of bounces to use in their segmentation.
Not quite! Hint: this will be equal to the average number of emails they expect users to receive in 90 days (about 12 weeks). Try again!
Not quite!
This page doesn't have the breakdown of bounce reasons. Try again!
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
- Users must have had 12 or more bounce events
- The bounce events must have occured in the last 30 days
- The type of bounce must start with "MailBlock"
- The user must not be unsubscribed from the email marketing channel
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
- Users must have had 12 or more bounce events
- The bounce events must have occured in the last 30 days
- The type of bounce must start with "MailBlock"
- The user must not be unsubscribed from the email marketing channel
Not quite!
Select the option that will ensure this list is scheduled to enter the journey every day.
Need some help?
Time to create our journey! Our journey should have two components:
- A start tile that enters users who are on the "Consistent Soft Bouncers" list on a daily basis
- A tile that will help you unsubscribe users from the Email Marketing Channel.
Start this activity by editing the start tile.
Not quite!
The metrics on the Overview page of campaign analytics just show the overall delivery and bounce rate, but we can't find a breakdown of the bounce type here. Try again!
Not quite!
This is not the correct entry source. Look for the entry source that will allow you to enter all users on a list into this journey on a regular basis.
Hey, partner!
I think we should start by setting up our soft bounce handling mechanisms in our project. I'm thinking we should make two:
- A general soft bounce policy that is lenient
- A stricter policy for specific types of soft bounces
Let's start with a general soft bounce policy. Ready to begin?
LET'S GO
Not quite!
This will allow you to update fields on their user profile, but not unsubscribe a user from a channel. Try again!
Need some help?
You added a start tile correctly! Now, all you need to do is add a tile that will help you unsubscribe users from the Email Marketing Channel, and don't forget to publish the journey when you're done!
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
- How much time to give users to allow for bounce issues to resolve. Remember, we want a lenient policy for right now.
- How many emails we expect users to receive in the timeframe we selected. I ran some numbers and it looks like on average Harvest Box customers receives 3 emails a week.
Need some help?
On the overview page of the campaign's analytics, we can see the overall bounce rate, but what page do we need to go to in order to find more details about the bounces, including the breakdown of types of bounces?
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
- Users must have had 12 or more bounce events
- The bounce events must have occured in the last 30 days
- The type of bounce must start with "MailBlock"
- The user must not be unsubscribed from the email marketing channel
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
- How much time to give users to allow for bounce issues to resolve. Remember, we want a lenient policy for right now.
- How many emails we expect users to receive in the timeframe we selected. I ran some numbers and it looks like on average Harvest Box customers receives 3 emails a week.
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
- How much time to give users to allow for bounce issues to resolve. Remember, we want a lenient policy for right now.
- How many emails we expect users to receive in the timeframe we selected. I ran some numbers and it looks like on average Harvest Box customers receives 3 emails a week.
Not quite!
This is not the correct entry source. Look for the entry source that will allow you to enter all users on a list into this journey on a regular basis.
Choose the Number of Bounces
On average, users receive 3 emails a week from Harvest Box. Harvest Box wants to find users who have bounced from all of the emails they've received due to a Mail Block in the last 30 days (about 4 weeks).Select the number of bounces to use in their segmentation.
Not quite! Hint: this will be equal to the average number of emails they expect users to receive in 30 days (about 4 weeks). Try again!
Not quite!
You don't need an integration to unsubscribe a user from a channel. Remember: channel subscriptions are a user update.
Not quite!
This tile won't help unsubscribe a user from a channel. Remember: channel subscriptions are a user update.
Choose the Time Window
You and your team decide that you'd like to be stricter for soft bounces that are due to a mail block, as these are more harmful to your sending reputation. Select the best time window to use for the segmentation criteria for the strictest policy for Mail Block soft bounces.
Not quite! Remember: the strictest policy would allow the least amount of time for issues to resolve. Try again!
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
- How much time to give users to allow for bounce issues to resolve. Remember, we want a lenient policy for right now.
- How many emails we expect users to receive in the timeframe we selected. I ran some numbers and it looks like on average Harvest Box customers receives 3 emails a week.
Close!
While you can export bounce events to see the bounce event data, let's make it easier on ourselves by checking the summary of the bounce reasons within the campaign's analytics. Try again!
Not quite!
We don't want to subscribe users who have been consistently bouncing to anything new. Try again!
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Transcript
Bounce Handling Scenario
You're a marketer for a company called Harvest Box: a meal-kit delivery service dedicated to bringing farm-fresh, seasonal ingredients and inspired recipes directly to your door. Your team is wrapping up your IP and domain warmup at Iterable, and in this activity, you'll get your bounce handling processes in place to ensure your sending reputation stays strong.
Get Started
Meet Mark
Mark is one of your teammates at Harvest Box, and he needs your help getting some bounce handling mechanisms in place. He'll be guiding you thoughout this activity. Throughout this exercise, if you need more context for a scenario, select the Mark's icon. Give it a try now:
Need more context?
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
90
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 90 days, they've had emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
36
Before building in Iterable, make a plan for what kind of policies you want to set for bounces. Select the pencil icon to make edits to your plan.
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 90 days, they've had 36 emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
30
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 90 days, they've had 36 emails bounce.
General Soft Bounce Plan
MailBlock Bounce Plan
We should unsubscribe users from email marketing channels if: in the last 30 days, they've had emails bounce that are MailBlock bounces.
12
Great work! You helped us plan out our soft bounce policies! Now, can you help me get them set up in Iterable?
Continue
Need more context?
Build a dynamic list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! This criteria will ensure users are only in the segmentation if they have 12 or more bounces. Select Continue.
Select the criteria you need to ensure that users in the list have had 12 or more bounces.
Not quite! Users need to have 12 or more bounces to meet this criteria. While 12 bounces is the minimum number for our criteria, if anyone has had more than 12 bounces, we want them to be included as well. Try again!
Continue
Need more context?
Build a dynamic list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! This criteria will ensure users are only in the segmentation if they have 12 or more bounces within the last 30 days. Select Continue.
Select the criteria you need to ensure that users have bounced within the last 30 days.
Not quite! Users need to have bounced within the last 30 days. In other words, the email bounce date should be later than 30 days before now. Try again!
Continue
Need more context?
Build a dynamic list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! This criteria will ensure users are only in the segmentation if their 12 bounces in the last 30 days start with MailBlock. Select Continue.
Select the criteria you need to ensure that the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock"
Not quite! Remember what field in the bounce event will give you information about the category of bounce it is. Try again!
Continue
Need more context?
Build a list for the Mail Block bounce policy you just created. The list should identify users who have had 12 or more bounces in the last 30 days if the bounce reason starts with "MailBlock".
Great work! You finished the segmentation! This will return all users who are subscribed to the marketing channel and who have had 12 or more MailBlock bounces in the last 30 days. Don't forget to save it as a list!
Select the criteria you need to ensure users in this list aren't already unsubscribed from the marketing channel.
Not quite! Remember, we want users to be in this list only if they are not unsubscribed from the Marketing channel. Try again!
Great work! You created the dynamic list! Now, we need to create a journey to unsubscribe this list from the marketing channel regularly. Click continue to begin creating the journey.
Continue
Need more context?
Create a journey that will unsubscribe users on the "Consistent Soft Bouncers" list from the Email Marketing channel on a daily basis.
Begin by editing the Start tile.
Need more context?
Create a journey that will unsubscribe users on the "Consistent Soft Bouncers" list from the Email Marketing channel on a daily basis.
Select a tile to continue editing this journey.
Edit the Subscription Preferences tile.
Great work! Now we're set up to automatically unsubscribe consistent soft bouncers from our Email Marketing channels!
Oh no! It looks like one of our campaigns has a high bounce rate. Let's go check out the campaign to see what happened!
Go to Campaign
Need more context?
It looks like there's quite a few soft bounces and hard bounces! We're going to have to troubleshoot both. Select the type of bounce you want to start with.
Troubleshoot the high bounce rate for this campaign by finding more details about the breakdown of the bounce reasons.
There were so many hard bounces as a result of this campaign! Can you advise on what we should do about hard bounces?
Not quite! Hard bounces indicate you're sending to an invalid email address. Consider what Iterable does already to handle hard bounces and what you can do to prevent invalid email addresses.
Looks like all the soft bounces were due to users' mailboxes being full! Can you help advise on what we should do next about this?
Awesome! I will see where all these invalid emails are coming from and see if we want to use an email validator to minimize these in the future! Now, let's look at our soft bounces. Select the soft bounces to find out the reason for them.
Not quite! Remember that users with a mailbox full soft bounce don't have an invalid email, but it could suggest they are not actively using that mailbox. Try again!
Looks like all the soft bounces were due to users' mailboxes being full! Can you help advise on what we should do next about this?
Not quite! Remember that users with a mailbox full soft bounce don't have an invalid email, but it could suggest they are not actively using that mailbox. Try again!
Great work! Since there were so many soft bounces due to full mailboxes, maybe we should consider having a stricter soft bounce policy for those types of soft bounces. I'll work on that. In the meantime, let's go back to the hard bounces. Select Continue.
Continue
There were so many hard bounces for this campaign! Can you advise about what to do to address hard bounces?
Not quite! Hard bounces indicate you're sending to an invalid email address. Consider what Iterable does already to handle hard bounces and what you can do to prevent invalid email addresses.
Great work!
Now our HarvestBox team are all set up to manage our soft bounces with segmentation and journeys, and you've successfully helped us troubleshoot an ad hoc campaign with a high bounce rate. Thank you!
Restart Activity
Not quite!
We want this list to automatically filter user in and out of this list in real time, so it always includes users who are currently subscribed to the marketing channel and who have had 12 or more MailBlock bounces within the last 30 days from now. We need a different type of list. Try again!
Not quite!
This tile will help you remove or add users to Iterable lists, but not unsubscribe them to a channel. Try again!
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
Not yet!
You will need to add the list here, but let's set the schedule first to make sure this list runs every day.
Choose the Time Window
You and your Harvest Box team decide that in general, you'd like to have a lenient policy for soft bounces, allowing more time for issues to resolve before you unsubscribe users from email marketing channels. Select the best time window to use for the segmentation criteria that Iterable would recommend to allow for the most leniency for soft bounces.
Not quite! There is a more lenient window of time you could use. Remember you want to allow more time for soft bounce issues to resolve. Try again!
Choose the Number of Bounces
On average, users receive 3 emails a week from Harvest Box. Harvest Box wants to find users who have bounced from all of the emails they've received in the last 90 days (about 12 weeks).Select the number of bounces to use in their segmentation.
Not quite! Hint: this will be equal to the average number of emails they expect users to receive in 90 days (about 12 weeks). Try again!
Not quite!
This page doesn't have the breakdown of bounce reasons. Try again!
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
Not quite!
Select the option that will ensure this list is scheduled to enter the journey every day.
Need some help?
Time to create our journey! Our journey should have two components:
- A start tile that enters users who are on the "Consistent Soft Bouncers" list on a daily basis
- A tile that will help you unsubscribe users from the Email Marketing Channel.
Start this activity by editing the start tile.Not quite!
The metrics on the Overview page of campaign analytics just show the overall delivery and bounce rate, but we can't find a breakdown of the bounce type here. Try again!
Not quite!
This is not the correct entry source. Look for the entry source that will allow you to enter all users on a list into this journey on a regular basis.
Hey, partner!
I think we should start by setting up our soft bounce handling mechanisms in our project. I'm thinking we should make two:
Let's start with a general soft bounce policy. Ready to begin?
LET'S GO
Not quite!
This will allow you to update fields on their user profile, but not unsubscribe a user from a channel. Try again!
Need some help?
You added a start tile correctly! Now, all you need to do is add a tile that will help you unsubscribe users from the Email Marketing Channel, and don't forget to publish the journey when you're done!
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
Need some help?
On the overview page of the campaign's analytics, we can see the overall bounce rate, but what page do we need to go to in order to find more details about the bounces, including the breakdown of types of bounces?
Need some help?
Let's create a list for our Mail Block bounce policy. The segmentation list for this policy will need 4 criteria:
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
Not quite!
This is not the correct entry source. Look for the entry source that will allow you to enter all users on a list into this journey on a regular basis.
Choose the Number of Bounces
On average, users receive 3 emails a week from Harvest Box. Harvest Box wants to find users who have bounced from all of the emails they've received due to a Mail Block in the last 30 days (about 4 weeks).Select the number of bounces to use in their segmentation.
Not quite! Hint: this will be equal to the average number of emails they expect users to receive in 30 days (about 4 weeks). Try again!
Not quite!
You don't need an integration to unsubscribe a user from a channel. Remember: channel subscriptions are a user update.
Not quite!
This tile won't help unsubscribe a user from a channel. Remember: channel subscriptions are a user update.
Choose the Time Window
You and your team decide that you'd like to be stricter for soft bounces that are due to a mail block, as these are more harmful to your sending reputation. Select the best time window to use for the segmentation criteria for the strictest policy for Mail Block soft bounces.
Not quite! Remember: the strictest policy would allow the least amount of time for issues to resolve. Try again!
Need some help?
Let's begin with our general soft bounce policy. For this, we need to consider two things:
Close!
While you can export bounce events to see the bounce event data, let's make it easier on ourselves by checking the summary of the bounce reasons within the campaign's analytics. Try again!
Not quite!
We don't want to subscribe users who have been consistently bouncing to anything new. Try again!