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Lark Valente
Product Pro
March 20, 2026
Solved

Removing "Hard Bounced" Emails

  • March 20, 2026
  • 6 replies
  • 92 views

I’d like to remove “hard bounced” emails from our active donor profiles so that we’re not sending emails that bounce back straight away. *I’m sure there’s a lovely automation to do that for future emails, but right now I’m focused on ones already in the system, many of which exist as “Unsubscribed - Hard Bounce.”

I haven’t found an export format or report that includes all emails on a profile and tells me whether or not they’ve soft or hard bounced - only the confirmation status. If there’s a format I haven’t found yet, please let me know! 

Otherwise, I’ve been going into CAL to pull a list of people who had a “bounced” result under the Targeted Email tab. But when I check their profiles, many of the emails are already removed.

I know there’s an easier way to do this, so please let me know what others are doing!

Best answer by Sally Heaven

Gotcha! Let’s see, I think you could see the full list of emails and their statuses and their unsubscribe methods by running the Email Address Status Report and filtering by Hard Bounce for the Unsubscribe Method. However, I don’t think there’s a way to remove those Hard Bounced emails in a bulk action. But you could at least have a full list and look them up one by one to click delete. Is that what you’re looking for?

6 replies

Sally Heaven
Sally Heaven
Product Pro
March 20, 2026

​@Lark Valente can you say more about why you want to remove them? Hard bounced emails are automatically filtered out of future Targeted Emails.

Raise HECK, a Bonterra partner and certified Super User
    Lark ValenteAuthor
    Product Pro
    March 23, 2026

    Hi ​@Sally Heaven! When it comes to solicitation, I prefer to pull a report and use a Mail Merge rather than targeted emails (I know, sue me!) and occasionally we’ll get a hard-bounced email as “primary,” which can give us a warped idea of how many people have an email on file (and it adds an extra step of seeing it bounce back, going in to update it, and rescheduling their solicitation/finding an alternate email). I know we can filter that out, but it would be nice to not worry about it. 

    It’s not a huge necessity, but it would be nice to sweep them out once and be done with it! 😊

    Sally Heaven
    Sally HeavenAnswer
    Product Pro
    March 24, 2026

    Gotcha! Let’s see, I think you could see the full list of emails and their statuses and their unsubscribe methods by running the Email Address Status Report and filtering by Hard Bounce for the Unsubscribe Method. However, I don’t think there’s a way to remove those Hard Bounced emails in a bulk action. But you could at least have a full list and look them up one by one to click delete. Is that what you’re looking for?

    Raise HECK, a Bonterra partner and certified Super User
    Lark ValenteAuthor
    Product Pro
    March 26, 2026

    Thank you, ​@Sally Heaven ! It didn’t click for me that “hard bounce” would be shown under the unsubscribe method for all emails. I was thinking about ones where people had never been subscribed and we had received a hard bounce back through personal comms… but I suppose that’s not actually going to happen often.

    That report works great. Appreciate the help!

      agracekuhn
      First Timer
      August 27, 2026

      ​@Sally Heaven I am seeing between 100-500 bounces on the emails we are sending. I ran a list to begin checking on them, but are you saying that because EA/Bonterra already unsubscribes the hard bounces that I don’t need to do anything further? I was under the impression these needed to be addressed/removed in order to have appropriate sends. 

      Sally Heaven
      Sally Heaven
      Product Pro
      August 27, 2026

      According to this help file, yes - one hard bounce results in an unsubscribe. And 3 consecutive soft bounces too. https://help.bonterratech.com/everyaction/s/article/2905511-email-statuses-subscribed-unsubscribed-not-subscribed


      “Unsubscribed indicates the email address has been opted out of receiving Targeted Email. Email addresses can have this status after one hard bounce (meaning a user not found error) or three soft bounces (meaning we've tried to deliver it three times but always get some sort of user unreachable or mailbox full error).”

      Something that is puzzling is on the Email Perfomance Report is that it includes a column for Bounced Yes/No, but doesn’t distinguish between whether the bounce is a hard bounce or a soft bounce. You can kind of tell if you filter by Bounce=Yes and Unsubscribe=Yes.

      Try this, ​@agracekuhn: Run the Email Address Status Report, delete the date filter, and then Group By “Unsubscribe Method.” This will give you the certainty that many people have been unsubscribed after the hard bounced or soft bounced too many times. 

      Raise HECK, a Bonterra partner and certified Super User
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