The email server has blocked delivery for security or spam reasons.
Hard bounces should be addressed immediately as they indicate permanent delivery errors that will not resolve themselves. Continuously sending emails to these addresses damages the sender's reputation and wastes resources.
Soft Bounces:
A soft bounce occurs when an email is temporarily undeliverable. This can happen for reasons such as:
The recipient's inbox is full.
The email server is temporarily down or unavailable.
The email is too large for the recipient's inbox.
Soft bounces often resolve themselves after a few attempts. However, if an address repeatedly experiences soft bounces over time, it may indicate a more persistent issue that needs to be addressed.
Why it's important:
Impact on sender reputation and deliverability:
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) closely monitor bounce rates to determine whether a sender is trustworthy or is engaging in poor email practices, such as sending to invalid or nonexistent addresses. High bounce rates are a red flag to ISPs, who may classify your emails as spam or block them from reaching inboxes altogether, damaging your overall sender reputation.
Continuously sending emails to addresses that generate hard or soft bounces is a waste of time, effort veterinary email list and budget. Since email marketing often costs money (be it software, content creation or list maintenance), high bounce rates can lead to inefficiencies, forcing you to invest in emails that don’t reach your intended audience. This reduces the return on your email marketing investment.
Biased analytics and performance metrics:
High bounce rates can skew your email marketing metrics, giving you an inaccurate picture of your campaign’s success. For example, if a lot of your emails bounce, your open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement will appear lower than they actually are, making it difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Steps to clean your email list:
When emails generate hard bounces, it is crucial to clean your email list by removing those email addresses from your list immediately. Continuing to send emails to invalid addresses damages your deliverability and sender reputation. Use your email marketing platform’s bounce management tools to automatically clean your list and ensure you are not wasting resources on addresses that can never be reached.
Investigate the causes of soft bounces:
Soft bounces may be temporary, but they still require attention. Repeated soft bounces should be monitored and you should investigate their root cause.