How to avoid sending emails to hard- and soft-bounce contacts?

[cquintero14]

Hi, I want to add a parameter to my workflows so that emails are not sent to hard- and soft-bounce contacts. What is the best combination?

I know there is a property to identify these addresses, but how can I prevent them from being enrolled in my workflow?

If not possible, how can I clean my database and permanently omit them?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @cquintero14,

There is unfortunately no property for soft bounces but you can easily exclude hard bounces.

First, create an active list of contacts where 'Enail hard bounce reason is known'. Then click into the enrollment trigger box at the top of the workflow and the left sidebar will open. Go into the tab 'Unenrollment' and specify that contacts on this list should unenroll.

That's it 🙂

Best regards!

PS. HubSpot automatically suppresses emails to all previously hard bounced contacts, regardless of whether it's a regular or automated email. Excluding them in the workflow enrollment criteria mainly means that the workflow will not return an error.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @cquintero14,

There is unfortunately no property for soft bounces but you can easily exclude hard bounces.

First, create an active list of contacts where 'Enail hard bounce reason is known'. Then click into the enrollment trigger box at the top of the workflow and the left sidebar will open. Go into the tab 'Unenrollment' and specify that contacts on this list should unenroll.

That's it 🙂

Best regards!

PS. HubSpot automatically suppresses emails to all previously hard bounced contacts, regardless of whether it's a regular or automated email. Excluding them in the workflow enrollment criteria mainly means that the workflow will not return an error.

[JTowner]

Do you know what Database field is changed when an email is suppressed?

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @cquintero14 while there isn't a property for soft bounces as @karstenkoehler mentioned, you can often identify them by combining two properties: 1 - Hard Bounce reason = Unknown and 2 - Marketing Emails bounced > 1.

When used in combination, this indicates a soft bounce because a bounce has been tracked without a hard bounce reason - I used to manually go through marketing emails to find soft bounces and add to a static list, this helped me to automate that process and you can either exclude your soft bounce list from the workflow or add the criteria directly.