This whole discussion of VERP versus batched for better bounce processing seems to have overlooked an arguably preferable solution: MTAs should return the Internet standard delivery status notification message. This has, in fact, been occurring. I've seen a dramatic increase in the last 6 months in the use of the standard DSN. I don't have any hard numbers although I can say that my hit rate for fully processing bounce messages has inched to 85% from 80%, for those elists that are a problem. What that means is the larger an elist gets or the lower the frequency of messages, the more problematic managing the bounces becomes. I divide my elists into two broad categories: those for which the bounce processing is 100% for all practical purposes and those for which I just can not get ahead. By the way, I have trouble believing that SmartBounce gets 97% because I see a new error message at least once a week, but then such statistics are based on your subscriber community so anything is possible. Overall, my community is worldwide and quite varied. Heck, I get error messages in foreign languages almost every day, which result in frequent updates to my parsing routines. In fairness, I do have to admit I've been thinking a lot about VERP distribution, for all the reasons already discussed. Even now I have too many to think about failed messages that come back with no indication or an ambiguous indication as to which address failed. It is a personnel drain to deal with them, although lately we discovered that letting them fail and keeping good records counts for a lot. We've been getting lucky lately getting similar failures across multiple elists, and the intersection can be quite revealing. Jim
-- James M. Galvin, Ph.D. Principal eList eXpress LLC +1 410.549.4619 607 Trixsam Road +1 561.619.2450 FAX Sykesville, MD 21784 http://www.elistx.com Delivering your email, your way. There are only two ways to live your life; one as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. - Albert Einstein
