Email non-delivery and complaints

Overview

Non-deliveries and complaints highlight issues with your email delivery. Addressing them promptly helps protect recipient experience and improve your sending practices.

Non-delivery activities:

• Bounced Email (Hard and Soft Bounces).
• Invalid Email.
• Deferred Email.
• Complaints.

Managing these issues is crucial for maintaining good email deliverability. High rates of non-delivery and complaints can harm your sender reputation. Follow deliverability best practices to ensure your emails reach your audience's inbox.

Learn more about Improving email deliverability.

Email non-delivery activities

Email non-delivery can happen due to issues with either the email content or the recipient’s side. Here’s a breakdown:

• Invalid Email: An Invalid email activity is triggered before the email is sent. Invalid emails are tracked separately and not counted in the Sent email activity.
• Bounced Email: This happens when the email is rejected by the recipient’s mail server. Bounced emails are counted in the Sent email activity but also tracked separately.
• Deferred Email: This is when the email is temporarily delayed but not rejected. Deferred emails are also counted in the Sent email activity and tracked separately.
• Complaints: If a recipient marks your email as spam, it is recorded as a complaint.

You can view email non-delivery activity under Activities and in Reports.

Bounced email (hard and soft bounces)

When an email can’t be delivered, it bounces back. Bounces fall into two categories: hard and soft.

Hard bounces

A hard bounce occurs when an email is permanently rejected because the address is invalid or doesn’t exist. Common causes include:

• Spelling errors in the email address
• A closed or inactive mailbox

When an email hard bounces, the address is automatically unsubscribed from future mailings to protect your sender reputation. This prevents you from repeatedly sending emails to invalid addresses, which could harm your reputation and reduce your chances of reaching your recipients' inboxes.

Soft bounces

A soft bounce happens when an email is temporarily rejected but the address is likely valid. Typical reasons include:

• Temporary server issues
• Recipient’s mailbox being full
• Temporary blocks or filters

Soft bounces are less permanent than hard bounces. They might result from temporary problems like server outages or your IP address being temporarily blocked.

Most bounces in your Ortto account are not due to IP blocks, thanks to the sending limitations around our acceptable usage policy  and the efforts of our Deliverability team.

However, if you notice a pattern of bounces or suspect a block, contact our Support team at help@ortto.com for assistance.

Manually resubscribe a person

If you need to fix an email address that caused a hard bounce (e.g., due to a spelling error), you can manually resubscribe the person. This should only be done if you've corrected the email address.

Learn more about editing a person’s subscription preferences under Viewing and editing a person.

Invalid email

An Invalid email activity is triggered before the email is sent.

Learn more about invalid email activities.

Correcting email address errors

To fix what might be a typing error in an email address, follow these steps:

1. Collect the correct email address: Contact the person to confirm their correct email address and obtain their permission to update it. Alternatively, ask them to resubmit their email address and consent via a form on your website.
2. Prevent future errors: Add a "Confirm email address" field to your forms. This allows users to double-check their email address before submission.

This approach ensures accuracy and consent while preventing issues with misspelled email addresses.

Deferred email

A deferred email means the recipient’s mail server has temporarily refused delivery. Ortto will keep trying to deliver the email for up to 72 hours.

If the email is successfully delivered within that time, it will be recorded as a Sent email. If delivery fails after 72 hours, it will be marked as a Bounced email.

Complaints

Complaints occur when recipients mark your email as spam. They signal that the email was unwanted or irrelevant. High complaint rates can damage your sender reputation.

The acceptable complaint rate for permission-based senders is below 0.02%, or fewer than 2 out of every 10,000 subscribers.

If you notice a rise in complaints above this threshold, stop sending emails and review your audience's subscription preferences. Frequent complaints suggest recipients feel they are receiving unwanted emails, which can negatively impact your sender reputation.