Bounced Emails[Link]

Number of bounced registrant e-mails.

We only send e-mails to registrants on very specific occasions, typically on request. We sometimes notice that e-mail addresses of registrants aren’t up to date. Outdated registrant contact information makes it impossible to reach the registrant and should be avoided. This metric leads to a score with a maximum of 3 stars.

Note that we only report permanently bounced emails (hard bounces). For more information about bounces and their types, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_message.

Why is this important?

E-mail is the most important and single official communication channel with our registrants. We use email to send transfer codes, registration certificates, domain name variants, to verify the identity of the registrant, to send contact details of people who want to get in touch with the registrant, or to warn the registrant for infections. See: Mails to Registrants for all mails we sent to registrants. In case of a malfunctioning email address, we cannot communicate with the registrant.

Also keep in mind that a registrant must always have a working email address. See Terms and conditions of .be domain names, Section 5: Obligation to have a working e-mail address.

Finally, email bounces damage our SPAM reputation and can lead to lost messages to other registrants due to SPAM filtering.

Score[Link]

We assess registrars on the number of recurring bounces, not bounces. A recurring bounce is a bounce that occurred between 2 weeks and 3 months of the previous bounce from the same email address. This gives registrars enough time to (help) resolve the issue.

How can you improve your score[Link]

Update non-working email addresses of active registrants as fast as possible.

  • Periodically check the email addresses of registrants or ask registrants if their contact details are still up to date (eventually using the billing contact details, as these contact details are most likely up to date)

  • Follow up on bounced email notifications. See: E-mail to ${email} bounced: Permanent Failure

Bounces per month[Link]

Per month, the total number of permanent bounces per 1 million registrations. Registrations are calculated by the end of the month. Note that all permanent bounces are counted: bounces and recurring bounces.

Top errors[Link]

Number of errors per 1 million registrations per SMTP status code