

Your email service provider may handle bounce management for you. The general rule of thumb is to retry sending to addresses that soft bounce - and to stop trying to send to addresses that hard bounce on this campaign and in the future. For instance, the recipient’s mailbox no longer exists. Hard bounces are emails that bounce for a permanent reason. For instance, the recipient’s mailbox might be full or there might’ve been an error with their mail server. Soft bounces are emails that bounce for a temporary reason. The codes also shed light on the specific problem, which can range from the user having a full mailbox to an email account that no longer exists.

(Or, at the very least, you’re not sending individual messages that people actually want.)

If you bounce a significant number of messages, keep sending emails to an address that bounced, and/or repeatedly send email campaigns with bounces, you’re sending a signal to the email service providers and email clients you’re sending spam.

When you send a message to a recipient and, for whatever reason, that message can’t be delivered, it bounces back to you.Īnd when that message does bounce back, the bounce notification will include a code telling you why it bounced. Bounces are an unfortunate but inevitable part of sending email (especially mass email).
