Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I am running an ecard site.  An user sends ecards to his/her business contacts via my site.  Many times, a number of the email addresses are no long valid and the emails are bounced back to me.  What are some of the best ways to process the bounced emails?  

netuser - If it were me I would use a software package such as MailMan or PHPList to send the emails in the first place.  Both have automatic detection of bounced emails (hard or soft) and you can configure how you want it to deal with each situation.  Then the only task becomes figuring out how to add / remove from the list itself which should be as easy as a database insert.

It is not as easy as using a mailing list management software.  The ecards that customers send out are actually email messages to the recipients telling them to pick up the ecards at the site (with a "ecard" url and a "pickup" url with a code).  So there is no "subscription" or "mailing list" to manage.

So, the email that are bounced are from email addresses that people enter to send ecards too?

Is there a reason for the bounce...like it`s not accepting the email because the receiving host thinks it is spam?

Does the sender get a notive of the ecard being sent or received?

Most of the ecard sites I`ve used (free ones) do not tell the sended if the email is rejected.

There is probably a script to "test" the email, but that will add a step that the buyer may not want to wait for.

~Roland

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The emails are to the recipients of the ecards.  The most common reasons are because of the email addresses are no longer valid because people have left the companies or because of email address typo.  A few bounce is because the company`s system think the emails are spam.

Our site indicates when the emails have sent out and whether the ecards have been picked up.  So if the many ecards have not been picked up, then the recipients know that something may be wrong.  It is good service to let the customers know that their email addresses have failed.  And it is to our benefit that the customers resend the ecards with the correct email addresses; it is marketing for our site.

Testing the email addresses is too much trouble for the customers.  I just want some more systematic way to process the bounced emails, which may be in different languages and may indicate something wrong with the content of the email or the my site itself.

This is a fairly common problem where the email client wraps the line with a line break. One way I got around it (not for e-cards) is with TinyURL.

Pat, over there at Toner-Design, turned me on to the location. I don`t need it all that much because I tend to send the URL as an alias in my email. But in situations like this, it might solve the problem?

Not 100% clear on what you mean by `process` the bounced emails? What do you want to do once you identify a legitimate bounce?

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chuck fuller

Something that processes the bounced emails.  Identify the invalid emails.  Group them, if there are multiple bounced emails for the same email address.  That is the start.  Ideally, it will also allow me to email the "ender/customer about the invalid addresses.

Well the originating server for the outbound email should receive any delayed/failed responses from the recipient`s server. As mentioned, any email management program automates the function of grouping and processing those, but I`m sure you should be able to find some freeware/shareware out there that would fulfill the same function; i.e. http://www.tucows.com/preview/400939



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chuck fuller

My site sends out the emails on behalf on our customers.  So the bounced mails are sent to me.  When a customer sends out 100 ecards, he/she can be 10 to 15 invalid addresses.  Some recipient mail systems send more than 1 bounced message for each address.  So I can have more than 20 bounced message for those invalid email addresses.  Some recipient company mail systems also send me emails informing that the emails are blocked due to possible virus/spam/spyware.  Some bounced messages are in other languages.

I will give eMail Bounce Handler 2.1.1 a look.  Thanks.