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Listen to What They’re Saying
A Deep Dive into Momentum’s Bounce and FBL Processing Technology
Momentum proactively adjusts sending
patterns and speeds from ISPs based on
bounce and FBL responses to ensure optimum
inbox performance for your email campaigns
and programs.
Bounce and FBL Processing
and Remediation
Bounce codes and feedback loop (FBL) reports present a daunting challenge to senders. Bounce codes
are machine-generated by the receiving email server
at an ISP when a message can’t be delivered due
to mistaken address or other error. Each receiving
domain implements differing policies for bouncing
messages. For example, some receiving domains
bounce messages with invalid recipients during
the SMTP transaction (in band) while others send a
bounce after the transaction is complete (out of band
or asynchronous). The bounce code and reason for
the bounce can differ between ISP receivers as well.
Each receiver has many reasons for bouncing or
deferring a message. Moreover, as a sender’s subscriber base grows and the number of ISPs you’re
sending to increases, the number of bounce types
grows exponentially. The reason for this is that, while
the SMTP standards that govern email sending and
receiving over the Internet do specify bounce codes
and their meanings, in the real world there is no
uniform standard for expressing codes, and each
ISP uses its own variation. Senders, therefore, must
be able to track and understand codes from many,
many ISPs. Further, as bounces return to the sending
system, the operator must remediate those bounces,
or take corresponding action to resolve the problem.
For example, if an address is reported as invalid by
the receiving domain, it is critical for the sender to
immediately stop sending – or risk getting blocked to
a greater extent by that ISP.
Processing feedback loops (FBLs) is another timeconsuming task. FBLs are records of recipient
responses to email — when you mark a message
as spam, for instance — and most domains send
a standard Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) report
to the originator. But as with bounce codes, report
formatting and content varies by reporting domain,
making FBL processing a complicated programming effort. Low cost MTAs have little or no FBL
functionality, at best providing a mechanism for
routing FBL reports to a folder or dedicated mailbox.
If the operator wants to automate the process for
interpreting the FBL information and implementing
remediation policies, that would require designing,
building and maintaining an application to do so. The
case is similar with bounce processing. Open source
MTAs were originally designed for small enterprise
applications. When sending in large volumes, the
corresponding volume of bounce messages quickly
becomes too large for human interpretation. Again,
volume senders must build a custom bounce-processing application to interpret and remediate all the
bounced messages.
In a small company with relatively simple email
processes, scripting code to handle straightforward
bounce and FBL remediation policies might not be
a heavy lift. But for mid-size companies, and any
Momentum tracks and reports on bounces (permanent failures) and transient failures,
helping postmasters to resolve problems and optimize delivery.
organization managing multiple servers and domains
with distinct policies for different customers or divisions — like an email services provider, for instance
— managing FBLs and bounces can become highly
complex and difficult. In fact, bounce and FBL processing represent a very expensive hidden cost of owning
a legacy or an open source MTA. Managing bounce
and FBL interpretation and continually updating
remediation policies to meet evolving ISP rules (which
can and do change over time) requires significant
engineering resources to maintain the applications.
Bounce and FBL Processing:
Easier With Momentum
Momentum includes dedicated bounce and FBL processing and remediation modules, providing a simple
out-of-the-box mechanism for managing this critical
part of your messaging infrastructure. Additionally,
Message Systems maintains the Live Bounce Updates
service, which provides a professionally managed
bounce code interpreter that eliminates the need
to constantly analyze new bounce codes. Message
Systems monitors unclassified bounce codes from the
worldwide ISP community, and regularly uploads new
interpretations to our customers’ systems. The module
automatically sorts bounces to approximately 20
classifications. Because the classification is available
to the policy engine, a simple script can be written to
manage remediation policies. The entire process is
completely automated, or Momentum operators can
choose to customize rules for their own environment.
Momentum’s bounce and FBL modules provide
many useful features. For instance, the operator can
add invalid recipients to a global suppression list
to ensure the system never sends to a bad address
again. Momentum can also update other systems
with information on address status, so the operator
can prompt users to update their address. More
complicated policies, such as counting the number of
‘mailbox full’ or ‘vacation replies’ before remediating,
are also easily managed in the policy engine. The
operator can make changes to the policies with minor
script or configuration changes, eliminating the need
for expensive engineering efforts, regression testing
and long release cycles. Additionally, Momentum has
an Adaptive Delivery module, which uses rules and
the data streamed through the FBL and bounce modules to optimize outgoing traffic, throttling it down or
accelerating it based on ISP feedback.
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Momentum’s ability to support inbound, reply and
out-of-band bounces through the same platform
from which messages are sent provides significant
value for simplifying sender architecture and feeding
data back to the application layer and associated
databases. Real-time insight into sending and queue
management within Momentum is highly valuable to
ESP senders. With commodity infrastructure, users
find that they know when messages leave their own
campaign management or CMS application, but
have no idea how long it takes their MTA to send
the messages after that. In some cases, it could take
several hours — and this is deeply frustrating for their
clients. All of these issues are easily addressed by the
Message Systems solution.
Bounce Handling Rules
Some ISPs publish their rules to help guide senders
into optimal sending practices. Others don’t publish
rule sets at all. Some change their rules frequently,
others seldom do. Given there are more than 12,000
ISPs worldwide (about 7,000 in the U.S. alone) and
millions of IP domains, it’s impossible for senders to
a) keep track of rules worldwide, and b) continually
tweak/update their sending infrastructure to reflect
constant changes. That’s why Message Systems maintains its Live Bounce Update service.
Key Distinction: Companies on the Momentum
platform typically use significantly less engineering
resources to operate and maintain their messaging
infrastructure. Instead of building and maintaining
their own bounce and FBL remediation modules, companies can redirect resources to building applications
or services that provide competitive advantage to
their core business. Because all bounce and FBL processing is managed in real-time within the Momentum
platform, ancillary hardware and software is eliminated
from the infrastructure. By taking advantage of these
capabilities, the operator is able to achieve significant
savings in labor and hardware resources.
Conclusion
No doubt, bounce handling and FBL remediation are
down-in-the-weeds technical email processes that
marketers would rather not have to worry about. But
for anyone involved in making decisions about email
infrastructure, it’s essential to have a basic understanding. Indeed, as discussed earlier in this guide,
getting bounce and FBL handling wrong can be a
very expensive mistake. And the opposite is equally
true: with intelligent automated bounce and FBL handling – native to the Momentum platform — you can
avoid costly ISP bounces and blocks, and optimize
the value of your email operations.
LIVE BOUNCE UPDATES
Keeping pace with ongoing changes to bounce rules can
be disruptive, costly and time-consuming. Most update
services that claim to operate “live” really don’t — with
new updates only a few times a year. Our Live Bounce
Updates service is different. Included standard with the
Momentum support plan, Live Bounce Updates provides
a regular feedback loop that ensures you receive the
latest bounce rules as quickly as possible. We constantly
gather unclassified bounces so they can be researched,
classified and pushed back to you as part of a new
bounce file directory. With the latest bounce classification rules in place you can more easily spot and resolve
issues to improve deliverability.
New Rules Set
Received As
Needed
Undetermined
Bounces Pushed
As Needed
Message Systems
Live Update
Server
Message Systems
Bounce Feedback
Server
Dedicated
Analyst
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