When you dispatch your latest email marketing campaign, the email server behind each distinct email address found on your email list will decide whether your campaign should pass through and reach the intended recipient or whether it should be rejected and bounce back as unwanted.
Bounces indicate that a subscriber's email server has rejected the incoming mail. There are two types of bounces depending on the reason why the campaign was rejected. It is highly recommended to keep an eye on your reports which will clearly inform you of the number of bounces of each campaign, so as to take appropriate action and ensure that your campaigns reach your recipients' inbox.
A. Soft bounces
A Soft Bounce indicates that the email address of the campaign's recipient is valid but a temporary delivery issue prevented the campaign from actually being delivered. Our platform will try to resend the email that did not manage to reach the recipient's inbox four additional times before a Hard Bounce occurs.
The most common reasons why a soft bounce might occur are:
- the recipient has set an auto-reply mechanism
- the email you are trying to send is too large
- the recipient's mailbox is full and cannot receive more emails
- the recipient's mail server is currently down or offline
B. Hard bounces
A Hard Bounce indicates a permanent reason why an email cannot be delivered to a specific subscriber's email address. Hard bounced email addresses are automatically removed from your email list and transferred to the Bounced status category.
The most common reasons why a hard bounce might occur are:
- the recipient misspelled their email address while subscribing
- the recipient has deleted, changed their email address, or provided you with a false address
- the recipient's mail server has blocked your server
To deal with all of the above it would be helpful to get more insight into how our platform allows you to manage your bounces. In addition to that, it might happen that one of your subscribers accidentally unsubscribes from your list. Therefore, being able to quickly add them back to a list or figuring out why specific bounces occurred shows you care about the validity of your email lists and leads to greater results for your campaigns.