Bounces and suppressions — admin

Communications → Bounces and suppressions.

Who opens it: whoever is told "I never get your emails", or who sees "Bounced — not mailed" beside somebody's name. What they came to do: find out why we stopped writing to an address, and whether that can be put right. What must be true when they leave: the address is being written to again because the reason is gone — or they know it cannot be, and have another way to reach the person.

Why an address is suppressed

We stop writing to an address when writing to it again would hurt everybody else's mail:

Each row shows the address, the mail provider's reason in its own words, who reported it — our mail provider, or your own connected list (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Brevo) — and since when, in your organization's time.

The same fact is shown wherever the person appears — on their page, among the people on a registration, on a sent message — as Bounced — not mailed or Spam complaint — not mailed, so you know before you send and not from a skipped row afterwards. Scheduled messages skip a suppressed address and record why; the person is on the print track instead.

Clearing a bounce

Clear on a bounced row, with a reason: what changed — the typo that was fixed, who confirmed the address. The address is written to again from the next message, the count of soft bounces starts again, and the audit log keeps your reason beside what the provider had said. If the address still does not exist it will bounce again and be suppressed again; nothing is lost by being wrong once.

If the address itself is wrong, correct it instead: a resend to a corrected address fixes the contact and clears the bounce in one step, because the bounce was a fact about the old address.

Where your connected list reported the bounce, the row says so, and so does the confirmation. Theirs is the state we follow: clear it there as well, or the next sync brings it back.

Why a spam complaint cannot be cleared

A bounce is a fact about an address, and facts go out of date. A complaint is a person telling us to stop. Overruling that is not ours to do, and mail providers close accounts that do it. There is no button, and the API refuses it too. Reach the person another way — a phone call, their group lead, a printed letter — and if they want your email again they can register with the address again themselves.

Who sees what

communications.read to see the list; communications.send to clear a bounce. A member limited to one group sees the suppressed addresses behind people in their own group and below it.