How to Track Bounced Emails in Salesforce

And Display a Visual Alert When an Email is Bounced

When sending emails from Salesforce, one of the things that will be quite handy to know is that if there was any problem in the delivery of the email. Emails may not be delivered because of an invalid email address, the recipient’s inbox is full or maybe the recipient has left the company. There are tens of reasons why an email cannot be delivered and you would want to know about it.

Salesforce has a feature called “Bounce Management”, that displays a visual indicator alongside the email address if email sent to that address bounces because of any reason.

When you activate Bounce Management in Salesforce, users will know which Lead, Contact and/or Person Account records have an invalid email address and which email wasn’t delivered. Email bounce alert is shown besides email address field in record details, highlights panel and besides that specific email message in the activity timeline (you need to enable Enhanced Email to show bounce message in activity timeline).

Once an email address is tagged as invalid, it shows the alert until it is updated or removed. If anyone tries to send an email to the same address after it is tagged as invalid, then they get an error message and the system does not allow to send an email to that address anymore.

Track Email Bounces

Salesforce provides standard Bounced Leads and Bounced Contacts reports in Classic. If you are still using Classic (ideally you shouldn’t be), then you can make use of these reports. And if you are on Lightning Experience you can create a custom report on Lead, Contact or Person Account, share it with your sales/support team to follow up with the clients and get it sorted.

So, it’s time to take one of the vital steps towards improving data quality. Just follow this guide on how to activate Email Bounce Management in Salesforce and learn how to:

  • Activate Bounce Management
  • Test Bounce Management
  • Create a Report to View Email Bounces
  • Guidelines for Using Bounce Management

in just under 15-20 minutes

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4 thoughts on “How to Track Bounced Emails in Salesforce”

  1. Hi Ashish,

    On your Slide #14, in the last box you mentioned that Bouned Back Error does not get updated if EmailRelay is enabled. Does it mean if EmailRelay is enabled, Salesforce won’t get to know whether email got bounced back or not?

    Also, are there any other caveats regarding Bounce Management when EmailRelay is enabled?

    Will EmailMessage flag ‘isBounced’ be still set to true of Email Relay is enabled and Email is bounced?

  2. Thank you for this article. When an email bounces is there a way to get the details about why it bounced. For example if I sent an email from my personal email and it bounces I get an auto-reply with details that let me know where in the sending process the bounce happened so I know how to resolve it. When you send from salesforce there is no auto-respond email. Is there another place to find these details?

    1. Ashish Agarwal

      Hi Angelina, there are two ways in which you can get the details about why the email bounced.

      1. You can look at the value in the field ‘Email Bounced Reason’ to understand the reason for the bounce. Please also refer to the section ‘Create a Report to View Bounces’ in the PDF to learn how to create a report on Email bounces.

      2. From Setup in Salesforce, you can navigate to ‘Email Log Files’ and request for an Email Log. The log file will also contain details on why the email bounced. For more information and screenshots, please refer to the section ‘Troubleshooting Tips’ in another blog post URL https://www.asagarwal.com/step-by-step-guide-to-setting-up-email-relay-in-salesforce-with-g-suite/

      Hope this helps. Thanks, Ashish

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