If you want to get technical details about how Mailrelay manages bounce emails, we have a great post that we recommend, it would be important to read it.
This time, we want to address the issue from a different point of view, targeted to the commercial and marketing departments.
In a more informal language, we will detail the reasons for each type of bounce, and perhaps most importantly, – what could be done (if possible, and unfortunately it is not always possible) to recover the subscriber, so that you can try to contact your potential customer or reader of your newsletters.
For a more structured view, we will use the bounce table and the reasons already shown in the first article, with a more detailed description of the reasons and a new column showing possible solutions or actions.
| Error Code | Error Message | Recommended actions | ||
| bad-configuration | Messages were rejected due to problems in the remote server configuration. This is a problem on the recipient’s server that has an error in the settings and is not allowing new messages. | You will need to contact the subscriber by phone to talk to the system administrator to try to solve the problem. When the administrator notify that the issue has been solved, you should contact the Mailrelay technical staff. | ||
| bad-connection | Messages were rejected due to connection problems with the remote server. It is not possible to connect with the recipient’s domain correctly due to some failure in the connection route. In this case, the problem may not be occurring directly on the recipient’s server, but on some intermediate server that is receiving and forwarding the message. | You sould contact the administrator of the recipient’s server to explain the problem, but also with the internet service provider, so they can analyze and try to locate the problem that is causing this error. | ||
| bad-domain | Messages bounced because the domain is invalid or nonexistent. If the recipient’s domain does not exist, you can receive this error. You need to confirm that the account is valid. | You also will need to contact the subscriber by phone to talk to the system administrator to try to solve the problem. When the administrator notify that the issue has been solved, you should contact the Mailrelay technical staff to validate the email again. | ||
| bad-mailbox | Messages rejected because the recipient’s address is incorrect, is invalid or nonexistent. The email account was not found on the recipient’s server. | You will need to contact the subscriber by phone to talk to the system administrator to try to solve the problem. When the administrator notify that the issue has been solved, you should contact the Mailrelay technical staff to validate the email again. | ||
| content-related | Messages bounced due to its content (Possible spam, sender is blacklisted, etc) | you will need to verify that your campaign meets all requirements listed in this article. You will need to contact the administrator of the recipient’s server for information about the problem and determine possible solutions. And, you should contact our Customer Service Department to see what could be done to solve this issue. | ||
| inactive-mailbox | Messages rejected because the accounts expired, are inactive or have been disabled. | You will need to confirm that the account is correct and contact the subscriber by phone to talk to the system administrator to try to solve the problem. When the administrator notify that the issue has been solved, you should contact the Mailrelay technical staff. | ||
| message-expired | The message was sent before the maximum time allowed, after previous attempts have failed. | You can try to send the message again when there is less saturation in the sending queue. | ||
| no-answer-from-host | Messages bounced because the system could not receive any response from the remote server after connecting. This could be a problem on the remote server configuration. | You will need to contact the administrator of the server to ask for more information on how to solve the problem. | ||
| other | Were rejected due to other reasons | You will need to contact the administrator of the server to ask for more information on how to solve the problem. | ||
| policy-related | Messages bounced or blocked due to problems with the policy of the recipient’s server. | Normally due to spam policy. You will need to review the email to make sure you are meeting all the points mentioned in the article you can find by clicking here. You will also need to contact the administrator of the server to ask for more information on how to solve the problem. And, you should contact our Customer Service Department to see what could be done to solve this issue. | ||
| protocol-errors | The message is being rejected due to syntax errors in the SMTP protocol. Mailrelay always uses correct syntax and commands, but there may be an interpretation problem on the recipient’s server. | You will need to contact the system administrator to try to solve the problem. | ||
| quota-issues | Messages rejected or blocked due to quota issues. The server rejects the message because the account has exceeded the limit of messages. | You will need to contact the subscriber by phone to talk to the system administrator to try to solve the problem. When the administrator notify that the issue has been solved, you should contact the Mailrelay technical staff to validate the email again. | ||
| relaying-issues | Messages rejected or blocked due to problems when trying to deliver the emails on the remote server. These errors may occur due to various reasons of internal administrative policies of the recipient’s server, for example, some servers will not accept any email with your domain that does not come from your own IP. | You will need to contact the system administrator to try to solve the problem. | ||
| routing-errors | Messages due to routing problems in the recipient’s domain. That is, the sender server cannot deliver the email correctly due to a failure in an intermediate server. | You sould contact the administrator of the recipient’s server to explain the problem, but also with the internet service provider, so they can analyze and try to locate the problem that is causing this error. | ||
| spam-related | Messages blocked or rejected due to reasons related to SPAM. There is a problem with the configurations of the sender domain, the contents of the email or spam complaints and the spam filter is blocking the email. | You will need to verify that your campaign meets all requirements listed in this article. You will need to contact the administrator of the recipient’s server for information about the problem and determine possible solutions. And, you should contact our Customer Service Department to see what could be done to solve this issue. | ||
| virus-related | Messages blocked or rejected due to reasons related to infected emails. This can be a serious issue. When you attach a file containing a virus or that potentially could contain a threat, for example, Word or Excel, your emails will probably be blocked. | The best solution in these cases is to scan the attached files using a good antivirus and if the problem occurs because the server rejects the message, marking it as potentially dangerous, you can compress the file using a software like Winzip, Winrar, and upload it to a server. After that, just add a link were your subscribers can download it. | ||
We hope these tips are helpful.