Email Deliverability

jbotelho
Contributor

Globally bounced contact unable to fill out forms

Last week we had a contact that reported she was unable to fill out any of our HubSpot registration forms. Each time she entered her email, she received a message that her email address was invalid. I tested the forms with several other email addresses (including some from the same organization). There were no problems completing the form. Only her speciifc email was the problem.

 

After further investigation, I saw that her contact had globally bounced. Thinking that might be the problem, I had HubSpot remove the global bounce flag and she was able to complete the form.  We then had the same issue with a different globally bounced contact the next day.

 

My question is why the globally bounced flag prevents a contact from filling out a form. That doesn't make sense to me. If the contact is taking the time to fill out a form with the email address in question, shouldn't they be able to complete that form? I would think that action should also validate that email and remove the globally bounced flag.

 

This poses a huge concern as we have no way to determine how many globally bounced contacts we currently have as there are no filtering capabilities to show contacts with the globally bounced flag. 

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4 Replies 4
sharonlicari
Community Manager
Community Manager

Globally bounced contact unable to fill out forms

Hi @jbotelho 

 

Thank you for the information provided. 

 

This is happening for deliverability reasons. A global bounce indicates an email address has bounced across 3 different portals so is highly likely to be an invalid email address. Therefore, we will block the email being used given we have internally deemed it to be invalid. 

 

I hope this helps

 

Thanks

Sharon 


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jbotelho
Contributor

Globally bounced contact unable to fill out forms

Thanks @sharonlicari ! I understand that the email would be blocked because of the global bounce. If the contact then uses that email to fill out a form, isn't that that contact saying their email is valid and they want to re-engage with us? I would think the global bounce flag should be automatically removed at that point because the contact is entering their info and validating the email. They shouldn't be prevented from filling out a form. That could cause us to miss a lead that has decided to re-engage with us and we could miss a sale because of it. 

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danaland
HubSpot Employee
HubSpot Employee

Globally bounced contact unable to fill out forms

Hi @jbotelho!

 

I understand this can be very frustrating, and ultimately we want to protect your email deliverability which is part of why we have the global bounce in place.

There are quite a few reasons an email can bounce. One of the most common ones is because an email address doesn't / no longer exists. There are some cases where a totally valid email address may end up getting globally bounced. Some organizations put special security measures on their email accounts that don't allow any outside emails in without prior permissions (think large financial institutions, security institutions, etc). Those security measures will hard bounce any email sent to them if their policies weren't already adjusted to allow them in. I have personally seen this with quite a few global bounces. Another case is the mailbox full bounce- when someone's inbox is too full and their email server won't allow any more emails in. One case that has been coming up recently is when someone worked for an organization but then left it. When they left, their email began invalid but marketers kept emailing to them, resulting in bounces until they were globally bounced. Then, they returned to their previous job and re-activated their email address. It's now valid, but in our system, it shows as globally bounced due to the time it accumulated bounces while it was invalid. In all of these cases, the person may not even realize there is an issue with their email address. Since hard bounces can be so damaging to deliverability, when one email address shows a strong history of bouncing, we protect accounts from it. This is also why we have the process in place to remove the global bounce during those times the person may have resolved whatever issue was causing the bounces.


I hope that provides some clarity around our decision process. 🙂

 

jbotelho
Contributor

Globally bounced contact unable to fill out forms

Thank you for the explanation @danaland. I understand the rationale behind the global bounce flag. I agree that it should be used to protect email deliverability. My concern is why a contact with a global bounced email address isn't allowed to fill out a form. I understand not sending them an email as part of a campaign or automated workflow but why are they unable to fill out a form?  When a globally bounced contact tries to fill out a form, they receive an error that their email address is invalid. This causes a lot of confusion to the contact as they have no idea why their email isn't valid. Shouldn't they be prompted to verify their email address and then have the bounce flag removed once they do so?   

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