Bounces and spam reports: why a contact stopped receiving your emails, and what to do

Leat keeps a list of the email addresses your email can't reach anymore: addresses that hard-bounced because they don't exist or contain a mistake, and contacts who marked your email as spam. You'll find it in Bounces and spam reports, together with 2 switches that decide whether such a contact is also unsubscribed.

This is the first place to look when a contact says your emails stopped arriving.

Where to find it

Click the gear icon at the top right of the dashboard to open Settings, then click Marketing under Functionalities. Bounces and spam reports is the last section on the page. You only see Marketing if you're an admin with access to marketing.

The 2 lists

Each list is a tab with the number of addresses on it, and a line at the top that explains what's on it. Hard bounces opens first.

• Hard bounces: the address doesn't exist, its domain doesn't accept email, or it contains a mistake, like gmail.comc. An address with a mistake is never sent to at all. Other bounces, like a full mailbox, a temporary problem or an email blocked as spam, aren't listed here, because they don't mean the address itself is wrong.
• Spam reports: the contact marked one of your emails as spam.

Addresses are added on their own, when it happens on a campaign, an automated email, a recurring email or a system email. An address is on each list once, with the first time it happened.

What each row shows

• Email: the address.
• Contact: the contact with that address, linked to their profile. No contact means the address doesn't belong to a contact (anymore).
• Reason: on Hard bounces only. Address doesn't exist, Domain not found or Invalid address.
• Sent with: the campaign or email it happened on, linked to it.
• Date: when it happened.

Click the arrow at the end of a row to open Suppression details. It starts with what happened and what you can do about it. For a hard bounce, that's asking the contact for their correct email address and updating their profile. For a spam report, it's respecting their choice and not subscribing them again unless they ask you to.

Below that, it shows the same as the row, plus the Type, the Subscription type the email was sent under and, for a hard bounce, Why it bounced and the Response of the mail server: the exact message the receiving server gave.

The lists show 10 addresses per page. Use Previous and Next to page through them.

Finding and exporting addresses

Type in Search by email address to find an address in the open tab. Part of an address works too, for example a domain.

Click Export to download the open tab as a CSV file, filtered by your search if you typed one. It has a column for Email, Type, Reason, Contact, Subscription type, Sent with and Date. Reason holds the response of the mail server.

Unsubscribing contacts automatically

The 2 switches at the top of the section decide what else happens when an address is added. Both are on by default, and each one saves as soon as you flip it.

• Unsubscribe after a spam report: when a contact marks your email as spam, they're unsubscribed from the subscription type the email was sent under.
• Unsubscribe after a hard bounce: when an address turns out not to exist, the contact is also unsubscribed from the subscription type the email was sent under. The address doesn't work, so email to it stops either way.

A few things to know:

• The contact is only unsubscribed from that one subscription type, not from your other ones.
• A subscription type with the Functional strategy is never unsubscribed.
• If the contact has changed their email address since, they aren't unsubscribed. The entry is about their old address.
• A switch only applies to addresses added while it's on. Turning it on doesn't unsubscribe contacts already on the list.

You can see the result on the contact's profile: click Marketing in the menu on the left and check the Subscriptions tab.

Removing an address

1. Find the address and click the arrow at the end of its row.
2. Click Remove from list and confirm with Remove.

Only remove an address when the cause is gone, for example a mailbox that didn't exist and now does. Removing it doesn't subscribe the contact again: if they were unsubscribed, they stay unsubscribed. If the address bounces or is reported as spam again, it's added to the list again.

For a hard bounce, first check that the address is spelled right on the contact. A mistyped address is the most common cause. Correct it on the contact instead, see Changing a contact's email address. The list is per address, so the corrected address isn't on it.

Think before you email a contact from Spam reports again. They told their mailbox they don't want your email, and mailing them anyway hurts your sending reputation. That makes more of your email land in spam, for all your contacts. Only do it when you know they want your email again, for example because they asked you.

When a contact says they get nothing

1. Search their email address on both tabs of Bounces and spam reports.
2. If it's a campaign or an automated email, open it and check their status under Recipients. A campaign only shows Recipients once it's been sent.
3. Open their profile, click Marketing in the menu on the left and check their status on the Subscriptions tab.

On Hard bounces, the address doesn't work: ask the contact for the right one and correct it on their profile. On Spam reports, they marked one of your emails as spam, and with Unsubscribe after a spam report on they're unsubscribed from the subscription type it was sent under.