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Email Marketing for Hard and Soft Bounce

Shawn Jacobson

hi, to my understanding that the only way to view hard and soft bounce from Email Marketing and create a constituent list. But there is no column to specify hard and soft bounce. This is time consuming to go through each record depending on how many there are and click on the Email History Tile.

For those that are hard bounce, am trying to delete those from the constituent record in NXT or database view as it is not needed. As for the soft bounce, we will keep it so it can keep trying to send it, after a month it will be deleted from the constituent record.

Am very surprised that there is no query to pull that list and hoping BB will come up with something that is very useful and straightforward. Another option in Email Marketing, when click on bounces, a flyout appears, how about adding the column stating bounce type such as hard or soft and when a constituent list is created, it appears there which would make things much simply to work with. Same applies to recipients, opens and clicks as well.

Let me know

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Comments

Amy Bridges

@Shawn Jacobson Have this same question so hopefully we can get a response!

Karen Diener

@Shawn Jacobson this is a great topic to add to the idea bank. It wouldn't surprise me at all if many similar ideas are already there, so definitely vote on them and repost links in this thread so others can vote them up.

Although Blackbaud staff lurk in the community, they do not respond to many posts. The idea bank is where they will always ask you to post “product suggestions” like this.

I think the email marketing needs quite a bit of work, and this is one of the areas where it really falls down. Sending an email is only part of the picture, and Blackbaud left out some important follow-up pieces that operations and marketing people need.

Austen Brown

@Shawn Jacobson - Here are a few ideas to vote for within the idea bank:

Hard Bounce Report in Email Marketing -

Export opt out and bounce lists from web view email -

Add Hard Bounce and Soft Bounce as list filters -

Constituent list filters to include email history -

Brenda Goo

@Karen Diener I completely agree with your feedback on the email marketing tool. However, like other areas in NXT, it is a work in progress. Since we started using the email marketing tool in 2023, I have noticed several enhancements added over time.

We are now fully utilizing the email marketing tool for all of our e-communications and have stopped using BBNC. The email marketing tool has been effective for us because it is user-friendly, and we can easily see what communications our constituents have received through the Email History. Additionally, they recently introduced a feature that displays "hard" or "soft" bounces, along with a bounce message for specific emails sent. This is a great feature to note on a constituent record when troubleshooting. Looking ahead, I will pay close attention to the communications module release for RE-NXT.

Karen Diener

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/305763#Comment_305763

I'm very aware that RENXT is a work in progress. I'm not new to Blackbaud or this software.

Regarding the feature that displays hard and soft bounces - is that easy to transfer to a constituent record, or can you only see it from the email marketing tool?

Does the email history tile retain all emails, or still only those from the last 13 months? That doesn't seem like an actual history to me.

I'm glad it is working for your organization. I just work with a lot of organizations that find it pretty cumbersome and incomplete. We are cautiously optimistic about the Constant Contact integration, but even that may be too much for smaller organizations.

Shawn Jacobson

Glad you are aware that RENXT is a work in progress, but to say it is taking a long time to add this feature.

Only the Email history shows whether it is hard or soft bounces but in Email Marketing, I can create the list that shows bounces however when it exports into an CSV file nowhere in any columns states hard or soft bounce. You would have to click on Open record and it takes you to that donor's profile then I can check Email history. From there, I can edit the email and delete the hard bounce but only keep the soft bounce for a month. This process takes forever to do one by one if there are a lot of bounces to go through in CSV file.

Even in the query there is no option to do a report for hard and soft bounces which would make the process easier. If there was a query for this, I would have done a global change to delete all hard bounce emails within 5 secs in which i have done in the past.

Austen Brown

(Note - Reposting comment; linked Ideas were lost in the move to the new platform)

@Shawn Jacobson - Here are a few ideas to vote for within the idea bank:

https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-2004

https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-2046

https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-3954

https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-3686

Pro tip: Add comments to any ideas that resonate with you, those help show the "why" to BB as they evolve WV into the Unified View. Thank you!

Karen Diener

@Shawn Jacobson - yes, this is exactly the problem.

Showing information in the product isn't useful if you can't work with it in a meaningful way. Although database managers may know where and why to seek out the details, a fundraiser is going to look at a constituent record, see an email address, and expect that they are receiving all email communication. You can tell them to also check the email history tile, but in my experience, that is more information than a lot of fundraisers want to chase.

I have a method I've used that involves exporting and importing to mark email addresses appropriately, but frankly, I don't think we should have to do that much extra work.

Kyra Pesso

I feel like we've been asking for this feature in WV since at least 2020. Has anyone heard anything from BB on why we still don't have this ability even though there have been many posts in the idea bank over the years requesting it and is a function we used to have in Online Express. It seems like a basic email platform ability to be able to pull a list/query identifying hard vs soft bounces.