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Message Delivery Failed Automation

Learn about the Message Delivery Failed trigger and its filter options

Ira avatar
Written by Ira
Updated over a week ago

As an email marketer, it's essential to understand the reasons behind message delivery failures. To increase the chances of delivering your message to all eligible contacts, you can set up an automation workflow using the Message Delivery Failed trigger.

In this guide, we'll dive deeper into the custom automation setup for the Message Delivery Failed trigger and its filter options to help you optimize your email marketing efforts.


What is Message Delivery Failure?

Message delivery failure can occur for various reasons, categorized as soft or hard bounces.

A hard bounce implies an invalid email address, which leads to an immediate automatic unsubscribe of the contact.

Soft bounces can occur due to various reasons, including issues like full inboxes, IP address problems, or sender domain issues. While some of these issues can be resolved within a day or two, it's essential to note that not all soft bounces are the same. For instance, full mailboxes, although technically classified as a soft bounce, often indicate poor-quality email lists and can sometimes be associated with non-existent mailboxes. In some cases, old and abandoned mailboxes are even converted into spam traps. Therefore, for safety reasons, we exercise caution when handling such bounces and may consider removal after multiple unsuccessful delivery attempts.

To facilitate the process of resending messages to contacts with delivery failures, an automation workflow can be set up using the Message Delivery Failed trigger. This feature enables the automatic delivery of the same message to all eligible contacts whenever it fails to reach their inbox.

By utilizing this functionality, you can ensure that all customers receive your communication while also optimizing costs and engagement rates by maintaining a clean list.

Custom Automation Setup

To set up custom automation, you need to go to Automation → Create workflow → Create from Scratch and choose the Trigger from the dropdown; in our case, it's Message Delivery Failed.

Message Delivery Failed Trigger

The message delivery failed trigger can be handy if you want to resend a message or, for example, add a tag to someone who didn't receive the previous message due to delivery failure. For instance, if you want to ensure that you receive a discount promised in a form, you can use this trigger to resend a welcome email. Keep in mind that the appropriate action depends on the reason for the delivery failure.

Please note that there's no history of events for deleted contacts.

Trigger Filters

With trigger filters for the Message Delivery Failed trigger, you can choose exactly which message type will trigger an action. Here are the different filter options you can use:

Filter

Description

Bounce Type

This field indicates the type of bounce that occurred when the system attempted to deliver an email message. There are two types of bounces: soft and hard bounces.

Email channel:

  • Soft Bounce

  • Hard Bounce

SMS channel:

  • Soft Bounce

  • Hard Bounce

  • Not delivered

Push channel:

  • Hard Bounce

Message Channel

Select one of the possible channels:

  • Email

  • SMS

  • Push

Delivery Failure Reason

If a message cannot be delivered, this field will briefly describe the reason for the failure. Reasons will be synced from your store's delivery failures.

Email Domain

Everything that goes after the @ symbol.

Note: works only for the Email channel messages.

Message Title

For the Email and Push Notification channels, you can add the title of the campaign message or the automation message.

Message ID

Message ID is different depending on which message type and channel it is. You can check IDs in reports of Campaigns and Automations.

Phone number, country code

Two-letter country codes according to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard.

Note: it works only for SMS channel messages.

Marketing Activity ID

  • For Campaign-type messages, have the campaign ID set as the marketing activity ID.

  • Automation flow-type messages have an automation ID set as a marketing activity ID.

Marketing Activity Name

The marketing activity name is different depending on which message type it is.

  • Campaign-type messages have the campaign name set as the marketing activity name.

  • Automation flow-type messages have an automation flow name set as the marketing activity name.

Marketing Activity Type

It depends on which message type it is. It can be either:

  • Automation

  • Campaign

Message Format

Message type:

  • SMS

  • MMS

Note: works only for the SMS channel.

Send Cost

The SMS credits that were used for sending your message.

Note: This only works for the SMS channel.

Segmentation

You can also use this event in segmentation to identify contacts whose message failed to deliver. Once you select the filter 'Message delivery failed', you can select additional conditions as in trigger filters.


If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected] or via in-app chat.

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