Email bounces explained: hard and soft bounces

The most common problem in the world of email is declared as a “bounce” when it cannot be delivered to the recipient and is returned with an error message; Inventario explains what each type is below:

Hard bounces

A hard bounce indicates that there is a permanent reason why an email cannot be delivered. In most cases, bounced email addresses are automatically and immediately cleaned from your audience. Cleaned addresses will be excluded from all sends in future campaigns.

These are some of the most common reasons why an email can suffer a hard bounce.

1. The recipient’s email address does not exist.
2. The recipient’s email server has completely blocked delivery.

Soft bounces

Soft bounces usually indicate a temporary delivery problem. When an email address is softly bounced, it will immediately be shown as a soft bounce in the campaign report.

If an email address keeps getting soft bounces across several campaigns, the address will be considered a hard bounce and will be removed from your list. We will allow seven soft bounces for an email address with no subscriber activity and up to 15 soft bounces on contacts with prior subscriber activity before turning a soft bounce into a hard bounce.

Although there are many reasons why an email address can suffer a soft bounce, these are some of the most common:

1. The mailbox is full (it has exceeded its quota).
2. The mailbox is not configured correctly.
3. The mailbox is inactive.
4. The recipient’s email server has gone down or is offline.
5. The recipient’s email server has received too many emails over a period of time.
6. The email message is too large.
7. The domain name does not exist.
8. The email message has been blocked because of its content.
9. The email message does not comply with the recipient server’s policies.
10. The email message does not meet the recipient server’s DMARC authentication requirements.
11. The email message does not comply with the recipient server’s anti-spam regulations.
12. The email message does not comply with the recipient server’s anti-spam regulations.
13. The email message does not meet the recipient server’s sending requirements.
14. The email cannot be transmitted between mail servers.
15. The email cannot be transmitted for unknown reasons.

If you have any of these problems, do not hesitate to contact us on our social media, @somosinventario

This article is a machine translation of the Spanish original.

• Email
• Marketing