Reasons Emails Bounce
Are your emails bouncing?
There are two types of email bounces- soft bounce and hard bounce. A soft bounce is temporary and a hard bounce is permanent.
What is a Soft Bounce?
A soft bounce happens when an email cannot be delivered temporarily. The issue is considered temporary, and there is a chance that the email can be delivered successfully in subsequent attempts. Email servers may continue attempting to deliver emails that result in soft bounces. It's recommended to monitor such addresses, and if the issue persists over time, consider removing them from your mailing list.
Soft bounce examples:
- Server outages making it "undeliverable" mail
- Full inbox
- Flagged content in the message
- Autoreply's such as "out of office" automated responses
- Blocked email
- Restrictive DMARC record for your sending domain. Example, the recipient server can't verify that the message's sender is who they say they are.
What is a Hard Bounce?
A hard bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to permanent reasons. The issue is considered permanent, and further attempts to deliver emails to the same address are unlikely to succeed. Email servers typically stop attempting to deliver emails to addresses that result in hard bounces. It's advisable to remove such addresses from your mailing list.
Hard bounce examples:
- Invalid email address or email address does not exist. This could be due to a typo or in a business aspect, the user is no longer with the organization and the email address has been shutdown.
- False address given if they don't want to receive emails, but want to proceed in a process requiring that information field be filled.
The best was to combat bounced emails is to keep up with your email contact list.
If you notice you regularly get a bounce from a specific address, remove them from your list.
In summary, a hard bounce indicates a permanent issue that prevents email delivery, while a soft bounce indicates a temporary obstacle that may be overcome in future delivery attempts. Managing bounces is crucial for maintaining a healthy email list and ensuring effective communication.
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