Viewing emails that failed to be delivered
When an email or dialog activity runs, emails can fail to be delivered for a number of reasons. You can query the WebSphere Commerce database to view details about the delivery of emails for the activity. For instance, you can view whether an email was opened, clicked, or bounced back to the sender. You can also view the email addresess that are associated with emails that were opened, clicked, or that bounced-back.
- A hard bounce-back typically indicates that the email address to which you sent the message is not valid. When an email that is sent to an address results in a hard bounce-back, any further attempt to send an email to that address will always result in a hard bounce-back.
- A soft bounce-back can be caused by some event or situation that is typically considered temporary. For example, if an email cannot be accepted due to a restriction on the size of a customer's inbox, this bounce-back is considered a soft bounce-back. Resending this message to this email address later might result in a successful delivery.
By determining which recipients failed to receive emails due to hard bounce-backs, you can consider removing the addresses for those users from mailing lists. For emails that recipients failed to receive because of soft bounce-backs, you can change how emails are resent to those users. For emails that were delievered, but not opened or clicked, business users can change the email template to encourage recipients to open future emails.