Types of bounces
While there are many reasons for an email to bounce, they generally fall into two wider categories: soft bounces and hard bounces.
Soft bounces
Theses are temporary blocks that should eventually resolve, and aren’t a reason to remove an email address from your subscriber list. If an email soft-bounces, it means the email address is valid and the email reached the recipient server, but it bounced back. Common reasons include:
- The mailbox was full
- The recipient server was down
- The message exceeded the size limit allowed by the recipient inbox
- One of your email service provider’s sending IPs is temporarily on a block list (more on this later)
Most email service providers will attempt to re-send an email up to a certain time limit, say 72 hours. After that, they won’t try again for this particular email, but will try to send to the address in the future.
Hard bounces
These are permanent rejections, and generally unresolvable. At Revue, we remove email addresses that have hard-bounced from your email list. Common reasons include:
- The email address doesn’t exist (People sometimes give a fake email address when asked for it in return for content — this can be avoided by using a double opt-in, like we do when someone signs up for your Revue newsletter)
- The email address is invalid (It might have a typo, not be in the correct format, or be out of use. This can happen when someone gets a new email address)
We remove these email addresses from your list because if the hard bounces mount up, that can damage the reputation of your newsletter, and of the IP we send your emails with — which can cause more emails to be sent to the spam folder or blocked by spam filters entirely. This would affect your deliverability, but also that of other people who use the same sending IP.