Daily

Reactivate addresses that bounced temporarily

People whose mailbox had a temporary problem get your emails again, and you see who was reactivated.

Runs: Daily
Apps: Postmark
AI: Not needed
Access: Server token (write)

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every day at 6am, reactivate Postmark bounces on my Transactional server that are soft bounces and can be reactivated, and email me the addresses.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Postmark deactivates an address after it bounces so you stop sending to it. That is the right call for a dead mailbox, but it also catches people whose inbox was just full or whose server was down for an hour. Those customers silently stop receiving receipts, renewal notices and password resets, and nobody on your team knows unless they complain.

Every day, ClickRuntime lists the inactive bounces in your Postmark server, keeps the ones marked as reactivatable (the CanActivate flag) with a temporary type such as a full mailbox or a transient failure, and reactivates those addresses. It then emails you the list of who was switched back on, so you can see what changed.

It is useful for any product where a missed message has a real cost, like subscription billing, appointment reminders or account security.

What you get out of it

Temporary problems stop costing you customers
A person with a full mailbox last Tuesday has room again by Thursday. Reactivating them means the next invoice or reset link reaches them, instead of being suppressed forever over a problem that already went away.
Hard bounces stay suppressed
Only addresses Postmark flags as safe to reactivate are touched. Dead mailboxes and spam-related blocks remain inactive, so you do not hurt your sender reputation by retrying addresses that will never work.
Support tickets about missing email drop
Many tickets saying a receipt never arrived trace back to a quietly deactivated address. Clearing the temporary ones daily removes a recurring cause, so your support team spends less time looking up suppression status in Postmark.
You keep a record of every reactivation
The emailed list names each address that was switched back on. If one bounces again, you can see it was already given a second chance and decide to leave it off, rather than guessing at the history.
Manual list cleanup disappears
Someone no longer has to open the bounce list, scan type labels and click Activate address by address. For a server with hundreds of bounces a month, that is a recurring chore handed over completely.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every day, ClickRuntime lists the Postmark addresses that were switched off after a bounce.
It keeps only temporary problems, such as a full mailbox, that Postmark allows to be turned back on.
Those addresses are reactivated so they get your emails again.
You get an email listing who was reactivated.

Before it runs live

Connect Postmark

What you get

RunsDaily

Reactivate addresses that bounced temporarilytoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Reactivated soft bouncesjo@northwind.example billing@acme.example

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Postmark steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

reactivate_soft_bounces.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, notify

API = "https://api.postmarkapp.com"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    headers = {"Accept": "application/json", "X-Postmark-Server-Token": credentials.secret("POSTMARK_SERVER_TOKEN")}
    bounces = http.get(f"{API}/bounces", headers=headers, params={
        "count": 500, "offset": 0, "type": "SoftBounce", "inactive": "true"}).json()["Bounces"]
    reactivated = []
    for b in bounces:
        if b.get("CanActivate"):
            if http.put(f"{API}/bounces/{b['ID']}/activate", headers=headers).status_code == 200:
                reactivated.append(b["Email"])
    if reactivated:
        notify.email_me(f"Reactivated {len(reactivated)} soft bounces", "\n".join(reactivated))
    return {"reactivated": len(reactivated)}

FAQ

Common questions

Which bounce types count as soft?

Postmark labels temporary conditions such as a full mailbox, a transient server problem or an auto-responder as soft types. Hard bounces, spam notifications and manual suppressions are different types. The CanActivate flag Postmark returns is the final check before any address is reactivated.

What if an address keeps bouncing after reactivation?

Postmark will deactivate it again on the next failure, and it appears in the next day's list. You can see the repeat in the email and decide to leave that address off, and the pattern also tells you a mailbox is chronically unreliable.

Does reactivating addresses hurt my sender reputation?

Retrying a recipient whose mailbox was only temporarily full is normal behavior and carries little risk. The risk comes from retrying hard bounces, which is why those are skipped. Keep an eye on your bounce rate in Postmark if you reactivate large batches.

What permissions does it need?

Server token (write). Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Daily