Discussions
Separate Bounceback and Unsubscribe Status
I've recently discovered, and have confirmed via an Oracle SR, that Eloqua Bounceback status and Eloqua Global Subscription status share the same back-end field despite appearing as separate in the UI.
This unfortunately has legal ramifications depending on how you address this issue.
As we've seen over the last few years, bounceback status is not a perfect science. We've unfortunately seen discrepancies with soft bounces being counted as a hard bounce, hard bounces being counted a soft bounce, etc.
Either way, in order to reset the status of an inaccurate hard bounce, we need to reset the email status on the contact. When doing this; however, it automatically resets the global unsubscribe value as well. So unless you manually recheck the global unsubscribe option, you've just globally opted someone back in who previously was unsubscribed.
This becomes an issue when globally opted-out accounts bounceback incorrectly and a transaction email (based on CAN-SPAM law) is needing to be sent. Since bounceback is not a status that can be ignored in Eloqua when sending an email, you have to reset the bounceback status, then re-unsubscribe the contact, then you are able to email them the transaction message by ignoring the global unsubscribe status.
A simple fix to this would be to separate out the unsubscribe status and bounceback status do they were not connected. Another fix could be that you allow for bounceback status to be ignored when sending transaction messages, similar to how you can ignore unsubscribed status.