Bounce management is critical in keeping email deliverability high so that you can reach as many of your customers as possible through their chosen email address(es).

Tips to lower bounce rates

• Do not buy, rent, or harvest email addresses.
• Use a confirmed opt-in process to collect email addresses.
• Verify your existing list.
• Monitor delivery by domains.
• Check your message against spam filters.
• Remove repeated soft bounce emails.
• Allow users to change their email address registered with you.

How are hard bounces defined?

A hard bounce is assigned to an email that is rejected outright because the system determined it as invalid. Some of the reasons for a hard bounce are:

• The email address had a typo.
• The email address does not exist.
• The email address existed, but does not exist anymore.

A soft bounce is temporary, which means that the user can fix the reasons for the bounce. Some of the reasons for a soft bounce are:

• The mailbox of the contact is full.
• The file included in the email is too large to be delivered.
• The server where Campaign Studio is trying to connect to deliver the email is down at that moment.

The Campaign Studio user interface displays hard and soft bounces as the same metric of Bounced. However, you must note the following:

• A hard bounce results in the contact immediately being labeled as Do Not Contact.

• A user can set the number of attempts to deliver a message for a campaign email. Therefore, if it is a soft bounce, Campaign Studio continues to try to send the email.

Bounce management is critical in keeping email deliverability high so that you can reach as many of your customers as possible through their chosen email address(es).

Tips to lower bounce rates

• Do not buy, rent, or harvest email addresses.
• Use a confirmed opt-in process to collect email addresses.
• Verify your existing list.
• Monitor delivery by domains.
• Check your message against spam filters.
• Remove repeated soft bounce emails.
• Allow users to change their email address registered with you.

How are hard bounces defined?

A hard bounce is assigned to an email that is rejected outright because the system determined it as invalid. Some of the reasons for a hard bounce are:

• The email address had a typo.
• The email address does not exist.
• The email address existed, but does not exist anymore.

A soft bounce is temporary, which means that the user can fix the reasons for the bounce. Some of the reasons for a soft bounce are:

• The mailbox of the contact is full.
• The file included in the email is too large to be delivered.
• The server where Campaign Studio is trying to connect to deliver the email is down at that moment.

The Campaign Studio user interface displays hard and soft bounces as the same metric of Bounced. However, you must note the following:

• A hard bounce results in the contact immediately being labeled as Do Not Contact.

• A user can set the number of attempts to deliver a message for a campaign email. Therefore, if it is a soft bounce, Campaign Studio continues to try to send the email.

  Important

  • After five soft bounces, Campaign Studio marks the contact as Do Not Contact.
  • Emails with Send to unsubscribed contacts set to Yes are not sent to hard bounced email addresses. For more information, see Transactional and marketing emails.

Finding bounced addresses

All contacts in the Campaign Studio system count towards your contact limit. Removing contacts with hard-bounces is part of maintaining a clean contact list.

Creating a segment

You can create a segment through a filter to list all bounced emails as they occur, and then create a report based on that segment to show the timeline.

Do Not Contact report

You can use the Do Not Contact (DNC) report in the category of contact reports to analyze unsubscribes and bounces from your contact list.

Are bounces automatically flagged in email lists?

Yes, a soft bounce automatically updates a contact to the Email Bounced status. The status appears on the individual contact record.

Are abuse reports processed as well?

Acquia’s email service provider handles abuse reports and Campaign Studio sets the contact to Do Not Contact. Your Acquia Account Manager will reach out to you if your emails are regularly flagged as spam.

For more information on maintaining your email reputation, see: IP and domain warm up for email deliverability.