Why emails are bouncing and how to resolve it

The reasons why you get bounced emails in email marketing

Luca Micheli
Written by Luca MicheliLast update 1 year ago

Have you faced a problem with the bounced email while doing email marketing? Did you try to deliver it to your contact, but it bounced back?


What does the word bounce mean?
It means that the email you sent did not reach your recipient's inbox, then you receive an error from your customer's email server or Customerly server. It is extremely important to deliver your campaign but what is also equally important is your IP reputation, so if you start receiving too many bounced emails, it will influence your reputation and delivery rate.


What are the types of email bounce?

There are two types of email bounce: a soft and a hard bounce.

A hard bounce happens when the email address of the recipient is rejected by a server. The reason might be that:

  • The email address doesn't exist

  • It was deleted or changed

  • In other words, it's invalid

To protect your sending reputation, Customerly does not deliver your message to the recipient's email inbox.

A soft bounce happens when the email address does exist and is valid, but the following happened:

An auto-reply of the recipient might cause the issue

  • Full inbox

  • The message was too large

  • Server error of your recipient

In the future, these email addresses would be able to receive your emails if one of the issues were resolved on their side.

It is very important that your emails successfully reach your customers' inboxes.

How do I resolve the email bounce?

Here are some tips for you:

1. Keep track of your email deliverability. 

It is very easy to do it on Customerly. Check this article on how to read your newsletter stats.

2. Keep your list clean

Clean your contacts lists regularly to remove unresponsive, inactive contacts that potentially might bounce on your next email campaign.

3. Allow your customer to manage their email address

They need to have the possibility to manage their addresses themselves.

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