Everyone handles bounces a little differently, but I always recommend keeping a tally of the number of times each email address bounces. For instance, create a "BounceCount" field in your email list table and increment it every time an email address bounces. If the "BounceCount" field reaches a value of 9 (you can use any number here; 9 is an example), then this is when I remove the address. I treat different types of bounces differently. For example, if an email address hard bounces, then I'll increment it's "BounceCount" field by 3. If an email address soft bounces, then I'll only increment it's "BounceCount" field by 1. You can weight each bounce category any way you'd like.

I'm using Microsoft Access 2000 for my database, but the principles within this article apply to any database system you may be using.

There are 2 steps to automating this process. They include:

1. Configure Visual Basic Script (vbscript) to monitor bBounceLog table in your MS Access database (see download below)
2. Configure Windows Scheduler to execute vbscript every 2 minutes

Pre-Requisites:

1. Completed Part 1 of this article.
2. BoogiePOP Enterprise installed prior to starting.
3. You have Microsoft Access 2000 installed.
4. Windows 2000 or later
5. Internet Information Service (IIS) installed (for email forwarding option)

Download:

Download the zipped vbscript file from here, and unzip the BounceHandler.vbs file to your local hard drive. If you didn't download the support database from Part 1 of this article, then you'll want to unzip the email.mdb database too.