How are the email bounces defined?

Learn about Bounced Emails

The “bounces” are the error notifications returned from inexistent addresses. In 95% of the cases, these are addresses or domains that do not exist anymore. In 5% of the cases, the address was written incorrectly.

We can define the bounces in two categories: "Hard Bounce" and “Soft Bounce”. In the first case the address is directly added to the bounces list. The address does not exist anymore; a further attempt would have no effect.

Hard bounces are email messages that are returned to the sender because they are permanently undeliverable. This may happen if the email address is invalid, the domain name doesn't exist, or if the recipient's email server has completely blocked delivery. A hard bounce indicates a permanent reason why an email cannot be delivered, as opposed to a soft bounce, which is a temporary issue, such as a full mailbox or a server error. High rates of hard bounces in email campaigns can negatively impact sender reputation and deliverability rates, so it is important for email marketers to keep their lists clean and up-to-date.

Soft bounces are email messages that are returned to the sender because they are temporarily undeliverable. This may happen if the recipient's mailbox is full, their email server is temporarily offline, or the email message is too large to be delivered. A soft bounce is usually a temporary issue that can be resolved, unlike a hard bounce, which is a permanent delivery failure. We will attempt to deliver a soft bounced message multiple times over the course of several days before marking it as a hard bounce. It is important for email marketers to monitor their soft bounce rates and take action to fix any issues that may be causing delivery problems.

The delivery system will make several attempts to deliver the newsletter during the next 48 hours. On our emailing platform, Mailpro™, the bounces are treated at regular intervals. As the system sends your emailing campaign several times prior to reporting an address as invalid, it might take up to 48 hours to mark an address as a “bounce”.

For much more information about hard and soft bounce and how we treate them with mailpro, read this!

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Question : How are the email bounces defined?

Learn about Bounced Emails

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