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Resolving bounces with "Unclassified Bounce" reason

Ivan Golovanov
  • Updated

Overview

You are looking at the reports for the emails that have been sent, and the majority of the emails are being bounced for the reason "Unclassified Bounce". You need to know what that means and why it is happening. 

Solution

  1. Download logs taken from the Standard Message Report in EmailLabs.
    By checking the logs you may see if the bounces are being caused by DMARC: 
     Unauthenticated email from YOUR_DOMAIN.* is not accepted due to domain's DMARC policy. Please contact the administrator of YOUR_DOMAIN.* domain if this was a legitimate mail. Please visit https://support.google.com/mail/answer/2451690 to learn about the DMARC initiative
  2. In case DMARC is the reason, first, make sure that you have recommended domain customization in place: 
    1. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
    2. Custom Return Path (CRP)
    3. Reply-to address
    4. Custom clickthru URL masking

      NOTE: If you are not sure about domain customizations, our agents will check that for you.

  3. In case you are missing some of the domain customizations, fill in the ACM Deliverability Custom Form and follow the instructions inside the form.

  4. When domain customization is configured, make sure that SPF record is configured correctly.

    SPF is used to authenticate email and specify the mail servers authorized to send an email for a certain domain. Mail servers use SPF to verify that messages that appear to come from that domain actually are from that domain.

    NOTE: DMARC and SPF records should be configured by the customer on your side as these configurations are completely external to ACM. For more information about DMARC, you can check the following site: https://dmarc.org

<supportagent>

Agents should check domain customization configs in the EmailLabs interface. If domain customizations are not configured, recommend the customer to initiate domain customization using ACM Deliverability Custom Form.

As it is said in the note above, DMARC and SPF should be configured by the customer on his\her side as it is completely external to ACM. But an agent may check which DMARC policy is configured for the customer's domain using an online tool like mxtoolbox.com, and inform the customer to give some direction.

</supportagent>