SAP Marketing Cloud - Campaign Success and Bounce Handling

[former_member196553]

This block should give an high level overview about how bounces for email are handled in SAP Marketing Cloud and how the Bounce information is reflected in the Campaign Success Details.

 

The sample is taken from the development system so the campaign success diagram may differ from the previous releases, the data however should be the same.

 

The the process flow the following. There is a target group containing 5 members, and an email campaign executed for that target group.



The initial information is that 4 emails have been delivered to the email service provider, 1 is failing due to missing marketing permissions.

 

Outbound Email:

 

On executing the campaign an outbound email interaction is created for all valid email addresses.

For the sample campaign, there are the following interactions created:

4 EMAIL_OUTBOUND interactions
1 OUTBOUND_CHCK_FAILED interaction





 

Campaign Success Screen

 

In the campaign success screen the figures are displayed as following - this figures are calculated based on the campaign interactions.



There are the following key figures filled:

Marketing Permission Check Failed: 1
Number of Sent Messages:               4
Number of Delivered Messages:       4

Those key figures are calculated based on the following formulas:

Delivered Messages = Number of EMAIL_OUTBOUND Interactions
Sent Messages = (Number of Delivered Messages + Number of Bounce Messages)
The success key figures 'Sent Messages' and 'Delivered Messages' do not yet give any information that the email was delivered to the contact email account but just gives the information that the email is sent to the email provider (AmazonSES or SAP Mobile Service).

 

Bounce Handling

 

SAP Marketing Cloud receives the bounce information from the email provider with a background job executed every minute. If there are bounce records returned the SAP Marketing Bounce Handler takes the information received from the email provider and creates the interactions accordingly.

Soft Bounce:

A soft bounce is usually returned if the recipient's email address is valid but the mail server bounced back. Typical examples for soft bounces are when the recipient's mailbox is full or when the mail server is currently down. This creates an EMAIL_BOUNCE_SOFT interaction for the contact. SAP Marketing Cloud has no follow up processing implemented for soft bounces.



Hard Bounce:

A hard bounce is returned when the recipient's mail address is permanently rejected, for example if the email address is not valid or does not exist.This creates an EMAIL_BOUNCE_HARD interaction for the contact. SAP Marketing Cloud invalidates the EMAIL ORIGIN ID and removes the email address from the golden record.



 

Campaign Success Screen

 

The bounced email addresses are reflected in the campaign success accordingly.



There are the now following key figures filled:

Marketing Permission Check Failed: 1
Number of Sent Messages:               4
Number of Hard Bounces:                 2
Number of Soft Bounces:                  1
Number of Delivered Messages:       1

Those key figures are calculated based on those formulas:

Sent Messages = (Number of Delivered Messages + Number of Bounce Messages)
4 Sent Messages = 1 delevered + 2 hard bounce + 1 soft bounce

 

Email Open and Click Through:

When a contact receives the email and opens the email or clicks a trackable link from the email, an EMAIL_OPENED and CLICK_THROUGH interaction is created. The EMAIL_OPENED interaction is created when initially opening the email only, whereas the CLICK_THROUGH interaction is created each time a link is opened from the email. The interaction is created with having a reference to the EMAIL_OUTBOUND interaction.



Campaign Success Screen

 

The email open and the click through information is available in the campaign success as well.



When a link inside an email is clicked more often the number of clicks might increase.



Delivered Email + Soft Bounce:

In some cases it might happen that the email service provider first sends a soft bounce response to SAP Marketing Cloud but later on delivers the mail successfully. In that case Hybris Marketing creates a soft bounce information first. If the contact than opens the email, the soft bounce will be transferred into an email outbound interaction again.



This happens only if the contact opens the email or opens a trackable link from the email. If the email is delivered despite a soft bounce response, and the contact does not open the email, SAP Marketing Cloud cannot update the interaction - in that case the bounce information remains in the system.

 

[former_member207603]

Thanks Johannes. Great Blog and the examples are really valuable.

[Peter_ITA]

Thanks Johannes. Will share that

 

[kevin_wang9]

Thanks Johannes, really great document.

[former_member222458]

Thank you Johannes! Nice blog.

Looking at your example, I have one open questions regarding the chapter 'Delivered Email + Soft Bounce'.

Based on your explanation, my understanding is that MKC is showing slightly wrong delivery rates, due to the fact that it is not able to update email_soft_bounce interactions (except if the recipient opens or clicks). Is my assumption correct?

 

Thank you, Anton

[former_member189549]

Thanks Johannes for this valuable information

[Former Member]

is there a place where we can get the list of emails that bounced?

[former_member196553]

Please refer to the following blog that provides a way to retrieve those details:

How to retrieve Interaction Details in the Hybris Marketing Cloud

 

 

[Former Member]

Hi,

We are running a campaign to Test Bounces, We could see the bounce report in Amazon Account. Howerever Hybris MKT on Premise is not collecting bounces from provider "sapAmazon". Kindly advise

Regards,

Thirupaty Reddy V

 

[afordham]

Thanks for the blog,

Do you know if there's a way of tracking these SOFT_BOUNCE to OUTBOUND conversions.  We have an external analytics box that takes the information about interactions every few minutes using the standard OData services.  When the SOFT_BOUNCE is converted, it just disappears.  The interaction record doesn't change to another IA type or get marked as obsolete; it just seems to be deleted.  As a result, there's nothing to indicate to the external box that it's gone.

Thanks, Andrew

[vervinckt_joyca]

Hello Anton,

I believe your assumption is unfortunately correct.

We experienced high soft bounce rates at a customer (around 30%) which worried us; but it was only high due to this described effect: if there is an initial softbounce and later a customer does not open the mail, it remains a soft bounce. It does not mean that your mail is e.g. considered as spam.

We know the mail got delivered eventually because we contacted the ESP (SAP Intelligent Notification 365 in that case) and they confirmed that 97% of the mails did get delivered. So it's a shame we see a 30% bounce rate in yMkt and don't see that it's only 3% in reality.

Kr,

Joyca

[former_member592330]

Hello nice to meet you. I am trying to send a massive campaign from hybris mkt using amazon. When sending a single email, I have no problem, but when I send a massive email, it shows me the following message. You could guide me what I should do.

 

"outbound http connection test for provider sapamazon failed"

Thanks for the attention

[former_member222458]

Hi johannes.voglsam , is the above described issue addressed already? Thank you, Anton

[former_member278381]

@johannes.voglsam Thank you for this documentation.

I have read this blog. "https://blogs.sap.com/2017/09/13/how-to-retrieve-interaction-details-in-the-hybris-marketing-cloud/" I am trying bounce management,that Segment group has a bounce mail "bouncetest@tribulant.com". But as you see below, I could'n response any bounce. I have done all communication arrangement, it works. Could you help me, please?

Target_Group