Why Do Emails Bounce in the First Place?
The most common reason for an email bounce is an invalid email address. If the username or email domain doesn’t exist, your message will bounce back.
However, an email bounce can bounce for various reasons, with some causes being permanent (a hard bounceⓘ) and others being temporary issues (soft bounceⓘ).
How can I tell when an email bounces?
If you bounce an email, it will eventually return to your inbox or the bounce address assigned in your campaign settings.
It will also contain helpful information, such as when the email bounced along with the error cause. This information can help you determine whether you should reattempt the email delivery or remedy issues with the recipient's email address.
However, you shouldn’t get in the habit of testing emails blindly and waiting for a bounce. The average bounce rate of your email domain affects your sender reputation, which can lead to more email bounces in the future.
The cause of hard bounces
If your email hard bounces, it’s due to an invalid email address. This means that the email address contains one or more of the following issues:
- The username doesn’t exist on the described domain
- The email domain does not exist
- The email address contains invalid special characters
- The address uses improper syntax
- The address includes misspellings or typos
The cause of soft bounces
You can also bounce emails thanks to common, temporary issues, including:
- A full mailbox
- Spam prevention technology
- The email server is offline
- Spam filters
- Email file size
The sender or the receiver can remedy the bounce cause, allowing future emails to reach the inbox successfully.
Stopping email bounces
You can stop email bounces with email verification. This process will leave your email list with clean emails.
Email verification and validation identifies valid and invalid email addresses. Then, you can scrub the invalid contacts from your list to prevent hard bounces.
However, it will also identify high-risk email types, such as spam traps or disposable emails. These email addresses may technically be valid but still pose a high risk of bouncing or damage to your email reputation.
> Learn more about email statuses
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