Prerequesites/Logic for Hard- and Soft-Bounces

[SCHNEIDERT]

Hi Experts,

does anyone know how exactly in MC is defined when a Hard Bounce Interaction (EMAIL_BOUNCE_HARD) and when a Soft Bounce Interaction (EMAIL_BOUNCE_SOFT) is written? What is the logic behind?

I would have expected that it is based on the DSN Code delivered by the ESP (in our case SAP DI / Sinch). So, if we get a Code beginning with 5., it would mean a permanent issue and in my opinion a Hard Bounce should be written.

But what we're facing now is for example:

The Contact gets a Soft Bounce. In the Interaction I could see the DSN Code 5.7.1 as InteractionSourceObjectStatus. The InteractionContent begins with "BOUNCED-FINISHED-HARD_BOUNCE" and includes a very detailed error description (including the DSN Code, Client host IP and so on).

How is that possible? Shouldn't that be a Hard Bounce then? Does the DSN Code have no influence?

For another Contact I also have DSN Code 5.7.1 but the Interaction in that case is a Hard Bounce...

Is it possible to influence the behavior of Marketing Cloud e.g. using the BAdI CUAN_IA_REVISE_FOR_IMPORT and maybe change the Interaction Type from Hard Bounce to Soft Bounce (and vice versa) based on the InteractionSourceObjectStatus field?

In addition to that: Has anyone ever written a logic where the email address is not blocked if a Hard Bounce is received?

BR Tobias

[vervinckt_joyca]

Hi Tobias,

I had a ticket a couple of months ago because I also had some inconsistent soft/hard bounces.

We are using Amazon SES.

Below is some information that I got from SAP Support, but in the end the cause was at Amazon who gave the wrong bounce type.

while it is not a full answer to your specific question, I hope the info and links here might already help a bit.

SAP Support:

For Amazon SQS, system will pull bounce data from the queue in Amazon side, then check the bounce type for the Bounce messages. If the bounce type is 'Permanent', then system would create a hard bounce interaction for this Bounce message. And create a soft bounce interaction for the non-Permanent ones. Similar information can also be found in the help document.

https://help.sap.com/viewer/b88f770e4b7c4ecead5477e7a6c7b8f7/latest/en-US/feba7a3833f6447db8d3056ac1...

The logic here is not complicated, so perhaps the bounce data may do not have the 'Permanent' bounce type in the AMAZON SQS Bounce Queue.

Me:

What is really strange:

https://tenant.s4hana.ondemand.com/ui#MarketingContact-showList?InteractionContactUUID=00163E54D8B11...

this contact had a Soft Bounce on the 3rd of June,

and today he has a Hard Bounce :s

Indeed in the Amazon queue it is listed:

{\"bounceType\":\"Permanent\",\"bounceSubType\":\"General\",\"bouncedRecipients\":[{\"emailAddress\":\"test0107@doesnotexist.com\",

However also in the Amazon queue an older message was still present from before (2nd of june),

there it does say the following:

{\"bounceType\":\"Transient\",\"bounceSubType\":\"MailboxFull\",\"bouncedRecipients\":[{\"emailAddress\":\"testbounce02072020@doesnotexist.com\",

So I suppose we need to forward this issue to Amazon support then for further investigation?

SAP Support:

As you found, it seems that Amazon treats the email address as transient bounce due to some reason.

And the transient bounce is often generated by the sender’s email server which indicates that a message could not be delivered but the server is still trying.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/messaging-and-targeting/handling-bounces-and-complaints/

So it makes sense to some degree. And if you want further clarification on this, could you please reach out to support of Amazon SQS?

[SCHNEIDERT]

Hi Joyca,

thank you for that information. So it seems that I have to open an incident for SAP DI again to investigate further.

I'll keep you updated if I got some feedback.

BR Tobias