How to generate bounce-back email notification, with some extra info included

Question

I am just now beginning to research this, and so far haven't come up with much. So, I'm hoping you guys can help me, or point me in some sort of direction.

I am in a situation in which I need to somehow be able to detect a failed email delivery and/or bounced-back email. Then, I need to be able to sent out a notification email describing this failure, as well as include some other, specific information in the notification email as well.

At the moment, I really have no idea how to do this. The email system we have now involves some C#.NET managed code, which send the email via an SMTP Exchange server. So, my initial thoughts are that I might be able to use email header information to accomplish this, but I'm not terribly family with all of the available email headers. I am also not at all opposed to finding and using some sort of third-party solution, but again, I'm not familiar with any such solutions or solution providers, and so I am very open to suggestions there too.

Answer 1

Are you using the SMTPClient class? If so, there's a SmtpFailedRecipientsException that would help you accomplish what you need.

Examples and further information given here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.smtpfailedrecipientsexception.aspx

Answer 2

You can use PostMark which allows you to programmatically process bounced emails.

Answer 3

Not sure if you want to download messages from an IMAP server or a POP3 server. If it's the case, you may want to check out the Ultimate Bounce Inspector component. It also let you process EML files.