Bounces, complaints and suppression

When an email can’t be delivered, or a recipient marks it as spam, Brudcast records why. For the serious cases, it adds the address to your suppression list so it’s never emailed again. Why: sending to dead addresses and to people who complained is the fastest way to lose your reputation. Receivers read it as a sign you don’t look after your list. This page explains why addresses are suppressed. Suppressions explains how to manage the list: finding an address, adding one, and removing one.

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Bounces and deferrals

Soft bounces aren’t suppressed because the address may work next time. Suppressing it would silently stop mail to someone who can still receive it.

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Complaints

A complaint happens when a recipient selects Report spam (or its equivalent). Many mailbox providers send these reports back to the sender through a feedback loop. When a report reaches Brudcast, the address is suppressed straight away. Complaints are the most damaging signal there is. See the rates that warn and then suspend a domain in Reputation and suspension.

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How an address ends up suppressed

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The suppression list

Your suppression list is shared across the whole organization and applies to every email: campaigns, the email API and SMTP. You’ll find it at Contacts > Suppressions. Every entry records the reason it was added and where it came from. Both are listed, with the labels the dashboard shows, in Suppressions. If an address is suppressed twice, the first reason is kept. A complaint that later hard-bounces stays a complaint, because that’s what explains why the address stopped receiving mail.

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Unsubscribes

Every campaign email ends with a footer that carries an unsubscribe link. Campaign email also carries the List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post headers, which let Gmail, Yahoo and other mail apps show their own Unsubscribe button next to your name and opt the person out in one step. The headers are added when unsubscribes are turned on for the sending domain. An unsubscribe applies to your whole organization, not just the list the campaign went to. Every email address on the contact is suppressed, so no future campaign, API or SMTP email reaches them, and their list memberships change to unsubscribed. Moving an unsubscribed person to another list is how senders earn spam complaints.

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What a suppressed send looks like

• Campaigns: suppressed recipients are skipped and counted as suppressed, not sent. They don’t use credits.
• Email API and SMTP: suppressed recipients are dropped silently. The request still succeeds, and the other recipients get the message. If every recipient is suppressed, nothing is sent.

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Removing a suppression

You can remove an address from Contacts > Suppressions. Only do this when you’re sure the problem is fixed, for example a customer whose mailbox was full and who has asked to hear from you again. Removing an entry doesn’t undo an unsubscribe. If the person unsubscribed, their email address keeps the status Suppressed on their contact record and campaigns keep skipping them, however many times you take them off the suppression list or add them to another list. The only way to make an unsubscribed address receive campaigns again is to update the email identity’s status through the API, and only when the person has asked to hear from you again. See Re-subscribing someone. See Suppressions for the steps.

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