How to automate bounce management workflows in Nobouncemails

If you’re sending email campaigns, you know bounces are a pain—clogging up your lists, tanking deliverability, and generally making you look like an amateur. If you’re tired of tracking bounces by hand or babysitting your inbox for delivery errors, this guide is for you. We’ll walk through how to automate bounce management using Nobouncemails, so you can spend less time cleaning up messes and more time actually reaching your audience.

Let’s get right to it.

What Is “Bounce Management” and Why Should You Care?

Quick refresher: a “bounce” happens when an email you send can’t be delivered. There are two types:

  • Hard bounces: The address is invalid or doesn’t exist. These should be removed from your list, no exceptions.
  • Soft bounces: Temporary problems like a full inbox or a server issue. Sometimes these resolve, sometimes not.

Why does this matter? Too many bounces and email providers start thinking you’re a spammer. That means more of your legit emails end up in spam folders (or get blocked outright). Automating bounce management isn’t just about tidying up—it’s about making sure your real audience actually sees your emails.

Step 1: Connect Your Email Sending Platform to Nobouncemails

First things first: you need your bounces to get to Nobouncemails so it can do its thing.

What You’ll Need

  • Access to your email sending platform (Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES, etc.)
  • An account with Nobouncemails

The Actual Setup

  1. Find your bounce notification settings.
    Most email providers let you forward bounce notifications (often called “bounce hooks” or “webhooks”) to a URL.
  2. Get your unique Nobouncemails webhook URL.
    In your Nobouncemails dashboard, look for the “Integrations” or “Inbound” section. You’ll see a URL—something like https://api.nobouncemails.com/inbound/youraccount.
  3. Paste that URL into your sending platform.
    Each provider’s UI is a little different, but you’re looking for places called “Webhooks,” “Notifications,” or “Bounce Handling.” Add the Nobouncemails URL there.
  4. Test it.
    Send a test email to a fake address (like fakeaddress@doesnotexist.com) and see if it shows up in your Nobouncemails dashboard. If it does, you’re golden.

Pro tip: If you’re using a legacy platform that doesn’t support webhooks, consider switching, or at least set up forwarding from your bounce mailbox to Nobouncemails. (But webhooks are faster and less error-prone.)

Step 2: Configure Bounce Processing Rules

Now that Nobouncemails is getting your bounces, you need to tell it what to do. Out of the box, it’ll try to sort hard bounces from soft bounces, but you can get way more specific.

What You Should Automate

  • Auto-remove hard bounces: Always safe.
  • Auto-suppress persistent soft bounces: For addresses that have soft-bounced 3+ times in a row, they’re usually dead.
  • Flag for review: If you’re nervous about auto-removal, you can have Nobouncemails tag or flag addresses for manual review instead.

Setting Up Your Rules

  1. Go to the “Automation Rules” section in Nobouncemails.
  2. Set up a rule for hard bounces:
  3. Condition: Bounce type is “hard”
  4. Action: Remove from list (or add to suppression list)
  5. Set up a rule for repeated soft bounces:
  6. Condition: Bounce type is “soft”; count ≥ 3 in 30 days
  7. Action: Remove or flag
  8. Set up notifications (optional):
    Want to know when a big chunk of addresses are getting bounced? Set up an alert. But don’t spam yourself—make it actionable.

What to ignore:
Don’t overcomplicate with rules for every obscure SMTP code. Ninety percent of your problems come from invalid addresses or repeated soft bounces. Focus on those.

Step 3: Sync Cleaned Lists Back to Your Email Platform

Automating bounce detection is great, but if your main mailing list doesn’t get updated, it’s all for nothing.

The Options

  • Direct sync: If your provider integrates directly with Nobouncemails, set up automatic syncing. This is the “set it and forget it” approach.
  • Export/import: Download your cleaned list from Nobouncemails on a schedule (weekly is usually fine) and upload it to your sending platform.
  • API automation: If you’re technical, use the Nobouncemails API to push updates to your platform via script or Zapier.

What Actually Works

  • Direct sync is best. If your provider supports it, use it.
  • Manual exports are okay for smaller lists or if you want to double-check before removing addresses.
  • API is overkill unless you’re running big volumes or have a dev team.

Pro tip: Don’t let bounced addresses linger. The longer you wait, the more you risk deliverability issues.

Step 4: Set Up Reporting and Alerts You’ll Actually Read

It’s easy to ignore bounce rates until things go sideways. Set up reporting that actually helps you spot problems before they spiral.

What to Track

  • Bounce rate trends: Watch for spikes—they usually mean something broke, or someone bought a bad list.
  • Top bounced domains: Sometimes a single provider (like Yahoo or Gmail) is blocking you.
  • Suppression list growth: If this is growing fast, your acquisition tactics might need work.

How to Set Up Alerts

  • Go to the “Reporting” or “Alerts” section in Nobouncemails.
  • Choose thresholds that matter (e.g., “Alert me if bounce rate >5% in a week”).
  • Pick your channel—email, Slack, whatever you’ll actually see.

Don’t:
Set alerts so sensitive that you start ignoring them. It’s like a car alarm—if it goes off too much, you’ll just tune it out.

Step 5: Regularly Review and Update Your Automation Rules

Bounce patterns change. Sometimes you’ll see more soft bounces because a provider’s spam filter got stricter, or because your list got stale.

Don’t Just “Set and Forget”

  • Quarterly check-ins are smart. Are your rules still catching the right stuff? Are you being too aggressive and losing legit contacts?
  • Test with real-world scenarios. Add some temporary test addresses to see how bounces move through your workflow.
  • Adjust your thresholds as needed. If you’re seeing a lot of false positives, loosen up. If junk is getting through, tighten things.

What to Ignore

  • Don’t obsess over rare bounce codes or try to “rescue” every soft bounce. Most are never coming back.
  • Don’t let fear of mistakes keep you from automating. You’ll spend way more time (and risk way more errors) doing this by hand.

Pro Tips and Honest Takes

  • Don’t trust any tool to fix a bad list. If you’re buying lists or scraping emails, no automation will save your sender reputation.
  • Bounce rates above 5%? You’ve got bigger problems than automation—rethink how you’re collecting emails.
  • If you only do one thing: Auto-remove hard bounces. Everything else is a bonus.
  • Documentation matters: Bookmark the Nobouncemails docs. Things change, and UI labels move around.
  • Start simple, then add complexity. Fancy rules are tempting, but most users just need 2-3 automations to stay clean.

Keep It Simple, Iterate as You Go

Automating bounce management in Nobouncemails is about making your life easier, not creating more busywork. Connect your provider, set up a couple of smart rules, and make sure your cleaned list gets back to your sender. Don’t overthink it—start simple, watch how things go, and tweak as you learn.

Email deliverability isn’t magic, but it does reward the folks who keep their lists clean and their automations sane. Good luck, and happy (actually delivered) emailing.