What are Email Bounces?

Email bounces are sent emails that could not be delivered to the intended destination and have thus been returned to sender with an auto response notification describing the reason behind the failed email sending. Email bounces are usually common among email marketers and promoters who have collected a decent number of contacts; however, it can happen to any individual.

Hard Email Bounce

A hard email bounce usually indicates a permanent error in the email delivery process. This implies that once the message is sent and a notification comes back that the delivery has failed, no further attempts to send the email be successfully made unless certain measures are implemented.

There are several reasons attributed to hard bounces, including a non-existent or an invalid email address, your email address is marked as spam or declined, or a strict recipient email security filter accepting only emails from pre-approved users and domains.

Hard email bounces popularly occur among those who engage in massive cold emailing where, in most instances, the email addresses used are not verified. This should be taken seriously given that with time, accumulated hard bounces will affect your email delivery rates and even sender reputation. If you’re using an email service you may be blocked from using their services if you have a high bounce rate and bad email reputation.

Soft Email Bounce

A soft bounce indicates a temporarily failed email delivery due to short term and amendable complications. As such, these emails can eventually be sent again and delivered to intended recipients upon rectification of the temporary issue. Some of the common reasons for soft email bounces include email server timeout, a full email mailbox, too large email message/attachments, an inactive email mailbox, being a blacklisted sender, or the email failing the recipient’s DMARC policy.

Essentially, all these problems can usually be fixed in a short time, which means your email may be resent and subsequent messages will likely go through. Soft bounce notifications usually reassure the sender of how or when to send the email again. However, continued soft email bounces might raise an alarm since after a number/period of tries, a soft bounce becomes a hard bounce.

Acceptable Email Bounce Rate?

Completely avoiding or trying to evade email bounces is a virtually impossible task not only for marketers with big contact lists but also ordinary people. Sometimes people misspell email addresses or just give you the wrong information.

You should always anticipate getting some email bounces in larger email campaigns, more so among the email marketers, but ensure to keep them below a certain percentage minimum. Bounces below 2% are usually safe, however after 5 %, you should start worrying since it may be a cause for alarm and therefore necessary measures should be taken before consequences become dire, overwhelming the performance of your email account.