Bounce is a metric that tells you how many messages in an email marketing campaign failed to reach the recipient’s inbox.
The 3 types of bounce
When it comes to bounce rate, you can actually distinguish three different types, each with its own characteristics: soft bounces, hard bounces and internal bounces. Let’s look at each one.
Soft bounce
As the word “soft” suggests, this refers to a minor, temporary problem that prevents an email from reaching the recipient. A soft bounce can be caused by several factors, such as:
- Message size too large
- Domain not working
- Domain with prolonged deferrals
- Provider not reachable
- Recipient’s mailbox full
- Content rejected
Hard bounce
A hard bounce is a different story: as the name suggests, it signals a permanent error with no chance of recovery. When this kind of error occurs, you will never be able to deliver an email to that recipient again.
It usually happens when the user you’re emailing has deactivated their account or deleted it altogether. In the worst case, the recipient may also have blocked the sender. The result? The message never reaches the inbox.
At this point you need proper bounce management, to keep these failures from damaging your sender reputation and your deliverability.
Internal bounce
An internal bounce occurs when your content, your IP or your server is flagged as spam. It can also happen when your domain is on a blacklist.
How to prevent bounces
To avoid permanent errors that can hurt a company’s reputation, you can take a few precautions:
- clean your subscriber list;
- monitor your bounce rates;
- run re-engagement campaigns;
- test your emails before sending.