We transferred to groups io from Y! recently and we have 50+ members in blue Bounce status. I’ve read a number of posts here on managing bouncers and have come up with the following observations and plan. If I’m wrong in my observations or anyone has ideas on improving on the plan, I’d appreciate comments.
Observations:
·Blue Bouncers with No Email delivery may well be perfectly content— they operate from the online site and don’t care about email. Bouncing is not desirable because we may not be able to contact them if an issue arises, but they are receiving service.
·Blue Bouncers with digest or single email delivery are not receiving the service they signed up for, although they may still be reading online and not be aware that they should be receiving email.
·Red Bouncers of any stripe are unreachable, but they might still be reading online.
Plan:
·Blue Bouncers with digest or single email delivery have first priority for me.
oSend out a mass email by checking them on the membership list and using the send message activity to ask them to check their spam folders and their spam blacklist. If they still want to participate, but our group address on their spam whitelist by adding us to their address book or explicitly to their whitelist. If they are no longer interested in the group, invite them to unsubscribe. Note that this message may not make it through their spam filter, but it’s easy so why not try?
oPost a message to the list that requests members who think they ought to be receiving emails to check spam as above. This may hit a few more bouncers. This may also help address blue bouncing no-emailers and red bouncers.
oFollow up by forcing a probe in a few days.
oFollow up in a few days by downloading the remaining blue bouncers list to a spreadsheet and doing a mailmerge. Send the mailmerge from a non-groups io address in hope that it will make it through the spam filters.
·Blue bouncer with no-email. Second priority.
oThey are handled by posting a message to the list.
·Red bouncers
oPosting to the list might help.
Questions
·When, if ever, to start unsubscribing non-responsive bouncers? List hygiene says bouncers are an untidiness and inflate and confuse metrics, but there is still a chance that they are receiving service.
·I understand the system will eventually automatically unsubscribe red bouncers. If we have reason to believe a member is receiving service and is still reading the site, can this be prevented?
Thank you. I appreciate your experience and knowledge if you comment.
Best, Marv Waschke, Technical moderator, [email protected]

We have about 15% bouncing, which is in the same ballpark. Y! had only a small handful. We had? members on Y! over the past year whose address appeared to have been mangled and I had to help the members correct their address. The address field looked like a chunk of raw memory to me. At first I thought of a cautious person generating a random string for an email address, but it was not in address form and I did not think our members would have the technical sophistication to do something like that, especially since they did not seem to be aware that their address had changed. The cause was unclear, but I guessed that it might be some errant maintenance on Y! Whatever the reason, it might be related to the number of bouncers on groups io. Maybe not.
Waiting until the go red makes sense to me. Problem sometimes correct themselves. (Not that often!)
Best, Marv

Weekly I go to members and scroll through the members list. When I come across a B (bouncer) I click on that person, page down to the bottom and click to send a bouncing probe.
When I first started there were many blue Bs, today 1 blue and 1 red. I copied the email addy and am sending her an email, since it’s a name I recognize I’ll also ask group members if she’s changed her email. (She was on full digest).
Nancy

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nancy in Renton
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2018 11:02 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [GMF] Managing bouncers #membership

?

The message is?550 5.1.1 Not our Customer.?To me that means she isn’t a member but she is. She is using the same email she always has and I’ve sent 8 bouncing probes over the past week.