JournoFinder pauses an email campaign when too many of its emails bounce. A bounce is an email that comes back because it could not be delivered. The usual cause is a few journalist addresses that no longer work.
Check the campaign's bounce rate
What you see: In Campaigns, the campaign shows “High Bounces”. On the campaign's Overview tab, the headline says “Paused automatically, too many emails bounced”. A “High bounce rate” banner shows how many emails bounced, for example:
“4 of 38 emails bounced (10.5%). Sending is paused to protect your sender reputation.”
The numbers are your own campaign's counts.
Why it happens: We pause a campaign when all three of these are true:
At least 20 emails in the campaign have been sent.
At least 3 of them bounced because the address does not work.
More than 5% of the emails sent bounced because the address does not work.
An address does not work when it does not exist, is invalid or is disabled. A full mailbox or a spam filter does not count toward the pause. Many bounces make mail providers more likely to send your future emails to spam.
How to fix:
Find the emails that bounced.
Remove people you expect to bounce.
Resume the campaign.
Each step has its own section in this article.
Find the emails that bounced
On the campaign's Overview tab, click the Problems filter. It shows people whose email bounced, failed or was marked as spam.
Read the grey line under each name. It says when the email bounced and why, for example “bounced 2 hours ago (address does not exist)”.
Note: A bounced follow-up does not show under Problems. That row still says “Sent”, with a line such as “sent 3 days ago (follow-up 1 bounced: address does not exist)”.
What happens to the addresses that bounced
You do not need to do anything for the people who bounced. We cancel every email still waiting to go to them in your campaigns. Addresses that do not exist, are invalid or are disabled go on your blocklist. The blocklist is the list of addresses your campaigns will never email. It applies to you and your team.
Warning: Do not remove a bounced address from the blocklist unless you know it works again. Future campaigns that include it will email it again. Stop emailing someone with the blocklist explains how the blocklist works.
Remove people you expect to bounce
Do this while the campaign is paused. Remove only appears for people who still have emails to send.
On the Overview tab, click Still to send.
Hover over a person and click Remove. Their unsent emails are cancelled.
Optional: click Undo within 15 seconds to put them back.
Look first at people at the same outlets as the bounced addresses. If an outlet changed its email format, its other addresses can bounce too.
We also check every address just before sending. An address we know will bounce is not sent and shows “Undeliverable”. How JournoFinder checks addresses and handles bounces explains this check.
Resume the campaign
On the Overview tab, click Resume. The campaign starts sending again.
After you resume, only new bounces count. The campaign pauses again only if the emails sent after you resumed meet all three conditions.
Still not working?
If the campaign pauses again, contact support. Send us:
the campaign name
the mailbox address you send from
the exact text of the “High bounce rate” banner
a screenshot of the Problems list
the time the campaign paused