How Is It Possible For a Hard Bounced Email To Have Opened, Clicked Into a Campaign, and Purchased?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
June 27, 2024
4 replies
315 views

Can someone please help?! Thank you!

I've been working on the bounced email address project, for hard and soft bounces. When I run the engagement analytics for hard bounces, why would I see results for Open Rates, Click Rates, and Average Order Values for hard bounced addresses? I would think that by definition, no hard bounced email would ever been seen, much less opened, clicked, and even ordered/purchased. I've even tried running the list to show >1 hard bounce, just in case the first bounce was something flukey.

Sample of my most recently created Bounce Segments, showing:

Bounced (Hard) Email Addresses
>1x
Over All-Time
= 170 Members → HOW ARE OPEN, CLICK, AND ORDER VALUES POSSIBLE ON HARD BOUNCES?
- Open Rate: 33.64%
- Click Rate: 17.13%
- AOV: $155 Past 30 Days

This topic has been closed for replies.

Best answer by Ashley I.

Hi @bald4404,

I saw this topic and immediately went “That’s a great question!”

I’ve never come across this instance myself, but I suppose it could have been possible for email activity to have been recorded for a specific Profile before the Hard Bounce occurred.

For example, let’s say in this case the Hard Bounce was caused by the email address no longer being active (i.e. email account was deleted by user). In theory, this person could have been engaging with emails before this took place, and upon the next Campaign send we observed a Hard Bounce on their Profile due to the invalid email address and they were subsequently suppressed.

Have you ever emailed someone and gotten the “This email address no longer exists” auto-responder? It would be the same idea as the scenario I am describing above.

This would be my best guess!

-- Ashley Ismailovski

Ashley I.Answer

2025 Champion

Hi @bald4404,

I saw this topic and immediately went “That’s a great question!”

I’ve never come across this instance myself, but I suppose it could have been possible for email activity to have been recorded for a specific Profile before the Hard Bounce occurred.

For example, let’s say in this case the Hard Bounce was caused by the email address no longer being active (i.e. email account was deleted by user). In theory, this person could have been engaging with emails before this took place, and upon the next Campaign send we observed a Hard Bounce on their Profile due to the invalid email address and they were subsequently suppressed.

Have you ever emailed someone and gotten the “This email address no longer exists” auto-responder? It would be the same idea as the scenario I am describing above.

This would be my best guess!

-- Ashley Ismailovski

Ashley Ismailovski, Klaviyo Champion & Director of Email Marketing at SmartSites https://www.smartsites.com/

J

jasonb

Problem Solver II

Hard Bounces can be defined as a dead email or an email that soft bounced “X” amount of times (I believe the klaviyo backend has it labeled as 3 soft bounces in a row, but could be wrong here).

Also I believe you are missing rule is missing a filter to separate the Hard Bounces.

kaila.lawrence

Community Manager

Jumping in to clarify Klaviyo automatically suppresses profiles that soft bounce 7 consecutive times. :)

Understanding bounced emails in Klaviyo

brightirismarketing

Problem Solver II

I pulled a segment in one of my accounts to spot check & see what the case might be for this! I created a segment of people who have hard bounced at least once over all time, and have opened an email at least once over all time.

In my spot checks, it seems like the most common situation is:

Subscribed at purchase
Engaged with emails for awhile
Soft bounced a few times first
Eventually hard bounced

I’ve found that clicking into specific profiles in the account like this is the best way for me to tell what’s going on in unique situations like this.

Thanks for asking this question, it’s not a topic I’ve considered before!

— Megan Brewster, Owner & Lifecycle Marketing Expert at Bright Iris Marketing (Get a free audit of your email marketing program: https://brightirismarketing.com/audit/ )

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