Cette histoire remonte à quelques années. À l’époque, j’ai face à moi un client particulièrement exigeant… pour ne pas dire… pointilleux. Le soupçon pèse lourd sur les résultats d’une campagne emailing, ce qui m’oblige à générer rapports sur rapports. L’annonceur en question ayant la possibilité de vérifier lui-même l’ensemble des interactions, il me remonte un problème qui selon lui prouve que nos rapports sont faux : Il y a un bounce qui a généré un clic !

Doubtfulness sets in

Yes, there, indeed, the pressure was already great, but the doubt settles. I check in the database, and the address in question has indeed generated an error (and a permanent one, not a soft one). I push the investigations a little further and indeed bounces regularly click on the campaigns (it remains an extremely small volume anyway).

Not so strange

Ces bounces actifs (un comble) ont une caractéristique en commun. Ce sont toujours les adresses qui ont été envoyées en premier lors d’une campagne. Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire ? Simplement que certaines destinations (FAI, Webmails, …) font passer les tous premiers messages d’une campagne déterminée dans leurs filtres anti-spam… que ce soit des adresses actives ou non. Et comme vous devez le savoir, de nos jours, les filtres anti-spam ne se contentent pas d’analyser le contenu de vos emails. Ces filtres cliquent et vérifient les différentes redirections qui s’opèrent derrière vos liens et ouvrent la page d’atterrissage finale. Cette analyse des liens permet par exemple de vérifier si certaines URL ne sont pas référencées dans des listes noires dédiées (URIBL, SURBL, …), de vérifier le nombre de redirections (trop de redirections vous fait resembler à un spammeur) et d’analyser la cohérence de votre identité d’expéditeur (sujet sur lequel il faudra que Badsender revienne dans les prochaines semaine).

Putting the undead back in their coffin

As a result, another side effect (even if its volume will be very limited), check that your asset management/assets don't put your bounce back on the scene, for example by increasing the marketing pressure towards it. A permanent error must generate a permanent deactivation of the address... in any case!

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The author

Jonathan Loriaux Avatar

7 responses

  1. Lucie de Sarbacane Software Avatar
    Lucie from Sarbacane Software

    Hello Jonathan,

    A small mistake has crept in: "The doubt is installed" in the 1st subtitle ;),

    Have a nice day!

  2. Charles Boone Avatar
    Charles Boone

    You also have the case of all those emails buried alive, because their server is misconfigured and sends back bad codes that make the platform, professional, classify them as NPAI Hard and bury them... while the customer exchanges every day with them by email. gloups!

  3. Jonathan Loriaux Avatar
    Jonathan Loriaux

    Lucie > Thanks, it's corrected!

  4. TOMASIAN Alain Avatar
    TOMASIAN Alain

    What frequently happens to us is that a recipient redirects to several addresses and one of these addresses is no longer valid. As a result, the initial recipient becomes a hard bounce (non-existent address) ... and generates opens and clicks... Not easy to explain to customers 🙂

    Have a nice day

  5. Jonathan Loriaux Avatar
    Jonathan Loriaux

    Alain > That's why I love emailing 😉 We can never rest on our laurels!

  6. Charles Boone Avatar
    Charles Boone

    Alain > strange, if the initial address is not in bounce, why the bounce goes up to you? It's the first address (the one that redispatches) that it should go back to, right?

    On the other hand, the tricky part is when there are aliases like at Wanadoo/Orange. The customer unsubscribes his orange email but the wanadoo one still works and is rerouted to his orange email. He may have unsubscribed 15 times on his orange address, he still remains an effective subscription on his wanadoo address 🙂 So he continues to receive emails, grumbles and ends up declaring you as spam when technically it is unjustified 😉
    In this case, it is with the tracking ids that we can trace back to the initial address and finally unsubscribe it 🙂

  7. TOMASIAN Alain Avatar
    TOMASIAN Alain

    Charles> It's in my bounces treatment, I intercept smtp dialogs between servers and so I have this kind of message:

    Mar 7 10:10:05 cerapoda postfix/cleanup[10298]: 8C33F2542A2: message-id=
    Mar 7 10:10:05 cerapoda postfix/qmgr[14891]: 8C33F2542A2: from=, size=93554, nrcpt=1 (active queue)
    Mar 7 10:10:07 cerapoda postfix/smtp[10307]: 8C33F2542A2: to=, relay=smtp-in.orange.fr[80.12.242.9]:25, conn_use=27, delay=1.7, delays=0.16/0.35/0.01/1.2, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (host smtp-in.orange.fr[80.12.242.9] said: 550 5.1.1 Address of at least one invalid recipient. Invalid recipient. OFR_416 [416] (in reply to RCPT TO command))
    Mar 7 10:10:07 cerapoda postfix/bounce[10508]: 8C33F2542A2: sender non-delivery notification: 504922542A5
    Mar 7 10:10:07 cerapoda postfix/qmgr[14891]: 8C33F2542A2: removed

    Since I'm doing my processing on "Invalid recipient", it goes to hard bounce... I'll have to process the "Address of at least one invalid recipient" instead and switch it to soft...

    Concerning unsubscriptions, I don't have this kind of problem because I rely on the address of the original recipient. But indeed, if the recipient doesn't use the unsubscribe link and asks me to unsubscribe him (during a redirection), if I don't have the original message, I'm a bit annoyed 🙂

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