Suggest Handeling BOUNCED Emails Please

[IPTV]

Ok, about to use IP.Board to send out a newsletter for the first time. Not the first time to send the newsletter, as we were using a 3rd party solution before, but the first time using the built in system. But this brought up a large concern seeing it reported 95,000 emails to go out.

From what I can see, you do not seem to have any way of dealing with bounces. Am I right? You know, from dead emails on file and the like.

If I am, might I suggest coming up with something where you can specify a bounce address to use and then program something where the system can check that mailbox and act on the bounces based on the type of bounce error produced?

I ask because such a list about to be sent will surely make for a lot of bounces. I am guessing of the 95K addressed mentioned above, we only have like 53K that are good based on the years the site has been on-line and the other program I used. As such, to not have a way to prune the list down automatically, will just mean a lot of wasted sends in the future. I hope you get my point. I know you are not a email package, but surely it can be enhanced.

It was suggested I use Mandrill. While this is a nice feature to have, it does not solve the issue all together.

Yes, it the good news it will deal with all the bounces and will not resend to that address in the future based on the type of bounce.

The bad news is that the IP.Board software does not have any idea that a bounce occurred that I am aware. (Unless your API talks to them somehow and can do something with a members account. But I see no such settings.)

The issue is this...say we have 100,000 addresses and 50% of them bounce as addresses do go bad over the years. Even though Mandrill has recorded them as no longer good and will not try to send to them again, the IP.Board software will still try to send 50,000 emails it does not need to because it does not know.

I hope this makes sense.

So, I guess the question then becomes, how do you clean up the system? (And yes, I have all emails verified. But over the many, many years the site has been around, we have a lot of dead addresses, or even spammer addresses, that now just bounce.

Their would be a lot to it for sure, but surely can be done. Some guy did it as a free Vb plugin so it can not be that bad. It went as far that after X number of bounces it would try to PM the person about the issue and ask them to check their email. After another X bounces, it would set all the thread subscriptions to on site notice only and also change the persons notice settings for emails.

Thanks for listening.

[SD_Denmark]

I am also interested in this...?? is it possible?? I am using mandrill

[Jadenn]

I believe if a message was not able to make it to the target, it would send an error back to the email your board is configured to use.

[Dmacleo]

depends on setup.

[IPTV]

I believe if a message was not able to make it to the target, it would send an error back to the email your board is configured to use.

And could...and would. Yes. However, the issue is how to handle that.

PERFIT EXAMPLE is what I used when I was still on VB...

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=83486

vBouncer is a handy tool for busy forums (or those that do not require email verification) to control the amounts of bogus emails sent from and to your server.

What vBouncer does: vBouncer monitors your mail spool file, and identifies members responsible for large amounts of bounced emails. It then issues a PM warning, and when the unsubscribe threshold is met, it will will unsubscribe them for all threads, and sets them to the "no email" subscription level.

After a couple of runs, this should significantly reduce your server load.

Features:
o Manual or auto processing option
o Collect logs via IMAP/POP or mail spool file
o Custom filters to match patterns in bounced emails
o Uses vB's cron files (Scheduled tasks)
o Uses encrypted header for authentication (suggested by Paul M).
o Stats on members with bouncing emails, and error codes
o Tuning options
o Verbose cron logs for diagnostics
o Option to send PM warning prior to reaching the limit
o Option to send PM notifications after reaching the limit
o Option to change the member's subscription default
o Option to all thread subscriptions to "no email"
o Option to all forum subscriptions to "no email"
o Option to move offenders to a different primary usergroup
o Option to process 5.0.0/550 errors (email unknown) upon a single email, isntead of observing the bounce limit

[VBSF]

And could...and would. Yes. However, the issue is how to handle that.

PERFIT EXAMPLE is what I used when I was still on VB...

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=83486

This is a must for those of us who have been a IPB customer for a long time. I have 13,000 members and registrations going back 13 years. I used Mandrill for the first time and had a deliverable rate of 65%. Really need a way to delete bad address in bulk.