What is a bounce, and what is the difference between a soft bounce and a hard bounce?
What hard and soft bounces are, and how the different bounce types are handled in Make.
Hard bounce (permanent)
A hard bounce indicates a permanent reason why the email cannot be delivered to a given email address. In most cases, these email addresses flagged as a hard bounce will immediately be removed from your lists and segments. They will therefore be excluded from future campaigns and do not count toward your subscription limit.
There are situations where an email address you know is valid has been flagged as a permanent bounce. This is often because a spam filter or firewall has flagged the email content as spam. If you know the recipient, you can send them a plain text email as a single test from Make. If this goes through and your newsletters are blocked, the issue is most likely with your newsletter content.
Soft bounce (temporary)
A soft bounce typically indicates temporary delivery issues. These email addresses are not immediately flagged as bounced. We allow up to three soft bounces before flagging the email address as a hard permanent bounce, meaning the contact's status changes from active to bounced.
If you have spoken with one of us, you might have heard this term mentioned and wondered what it means. It is simply a term to describe internet service providers, and in this context, email service providers like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Lyse, etc.
Other bounce "Other"
Other is a category for emails that do not fall under standard hard or soft bounces. When an ISP does not use a standard code to explain why an email was returned, it is typically categorized as "other".
We work continuously with bounce issues and ISPs
Unfortunately, we cannot predict whether an email will be delivered. Different ISPs (Internet Service Providers) evaluate emails based on their own algorithms and systems. However, we can contact them directly to resolve these issues, often right after they occur.
When you export bounces from Make, we include the "Bounce reason" per contact, so you can also see why the email addresses were flagged as bounces.
Are you experiencing issues with emails not being delivered? Please get in touch, and we will help you. Note: Remember that you can also prevent bounces and blocks by testing your newsletters before sending them.