Unusable email list shows only opt-outs

Leslie Choitz

When I look at the Unusable Email list in OLX for any range of dates, the only email addresses that are listed are those who have opted out.  I have double checked to make sure that All Types are supposed to be displayed.  When I look at the Bounced report for individual emails we have sent, there are addresses listed.  Any idea why there is a difference between the reports?

Austen Brown

Hi Leslie Choitz‍ - There are two different ways an email can bounce within OLX: Hard and Soft.  The Email stats window will list out any instance of an email bounce, while the Unsable Emails window will only include Hard Bounces.  To understand the difference between hard and soft bounces, check out BB's Email Resource Center's Explanation.

Chris Martin

Hi Leslie Choitz‍. I think I can explain what you're seeing. Online Express currently only shows bounced email addresses in the Unusable Email Address list for up to 30 days after the email address bounced in a given email job. After that, you no longer see those bounced email addresses in that list (even though Online Express continues to suppress hard bounces automatically and perpetually). We have heard from customers that they'd prefer that bounced email addresses not disappear from the unusable address list and this suggestion is under evaluation as potential work for later this year.


Hopefully that helps explain what you're seeing.


Thanks,

Chris Martin

Blackbaud Product Management

Leslie Choitz

Hi Austen Brown‍ and Chris Martin‍, Thanks for letting me know I'm not crazy!  I understand the difference between soft and hard bounces, but could not understand why there were hard bounces in the individual email bounce report, but nothing in the system-wide Unusable report.  And I thought I'd seen bounced emails in the Unusable report fairly recently.  The 30-day time frame explains it.  I hope they let then stay longer.  Or at least change the wording at the top of the Unusable window to explain the system.  Again, thanks very much!

Austen Brown

Chris Martin‍ - Is there anything in the works to mark Hard Bounce emails in RE as inactive? Right now we are manually updating these emails on records as it happens. 

Leslie Choitz

Two more questions: 1) Are the emails on the bounced list only hard bounces?  2) I thought at one time when the list was downloaded it also gave more information about the bounce, such as "no such recipient."  Or was that only on the Unusable Email Addresses report?  Thanks.

Chris Martin

Hey Austen Brown‍ we don't have immediate plans for work to auto-mark email addresses in RE as inactive when they hard-bounce in OLX. I'm pretty confident you'll see this in RENXT email instead of in OLX.

Leslie Choitz‍ there are 2 places you could see information about bounced email addresses. The first is when looking at the stats for a specific email job. From that screen, there's the blue link that shows the total count of bounces. That shows both hard and soft bounces and viewing the list of email addresses doesn't differentiate between hard and soft bounces there...and you don't see additional detail about the nature of the bounce there either.


The second place you see bounce info is in the Unusable Email Address list. Hard bounces will appear in that list but soft bounces won't (because OLX doesn't auto-suppress soft bounces). And in the Unusable Email Address list, you can hover over the blue Hard Bounce link to see the full bounce message returned by the mailbox provider. You also get the full bounce text in the export of the Unusable Email Address list.


If you're working from the Unusable Email Address list and manually marking hard bounced email addresses in RE, just be sure you do this at least once every 30 days because of the behavior described in this thread (where hard bounces currently drop off of the unusable address list after 30 days).


Thanks!

Chris Martin

Blackbaud Product Management

Susan Recksiedler

Hi Chris,

I am trying to clean-up our database, as we had not been recording hard bounces on constituent records for the last 5 years - just relying on OLX to suppress. Is there any way I would be able to get a full report from OLX that includes our hard bounces and opt-outs since 2015?