NYCPHP Meetup

NYPHP.org

[nycphp-talk] Re: Monitoring for Bounce Mail

inforequest 1j0lkq002 at sneakemail.com
Sat Apr 30 17:55:17 EDT 2005


Jeff Loiselle jeff.loiselle-at-gmail.com |nyphp dev/internal group use| 
wrote:

>What I've always done in the past is set the Return-Path header in the
>email to a specific bounce address (done via the MTA) plus user
>identifier token.
>
>For example: bounce_address+list_member_email at domain.com
>
>Then in my mail configuration, I pipe that address into a php script..
>look for the Return-Path header.. and most likely if it's coming back
>to this address it's a bounce (unless you really feel like recognizing
>hundreds of bounce formats). Then I remove that list member from my
>database.
>_______________________________________________
>  
>
In this day of opt-in mailing lists, you might consider taking bounces 
and re-subscribing them to a parallel list (so they get sent an opt-in 
notification for that second, parallel list.. the subscribe message 
could say say you've had trouble getting thru, click this link to try 
again). Then if they bounce from that list as well, auto-remove them. If 
they click however, it's a re-subscribe, and they're on your mailing 
list again (but your second list, where  you know them to have 
troublesome email addy's). Send your emails to both lists; don't allow 
any subscribes to the second list except via your bounce management setup.

I think it's good to never lose a customer unless you really have to, 
and really good to have an affirmation of desire to receive mailings, 
and really good to be know you have 10k subscribers, where 9,500 are 
solid and 500 are "pretty good" etc. for segmenting purposes.

-=john andrews






More information about the talk mailing list