by Kyle Blacker 
Any marketer who has sent an email to a list of prospects has likely seen several individual sends flagged as a soft or hard bounce. Keeping on top of your prospect health is recommended as it impacts your overall deliverability rate, which then has implications on your sender reputation over time. But what does a soft or hard bounce mean and what do you do with those prospects? Read on to find out!
What are bounces?
An email bounce is when an email has been sent to an inbox that can’t, for whatever reason, accept the delivery of that email. There are several types of bounce reasons, and these are categorised into either a “Soft Bounce” or a “Hard Bounce”.
A soft bounce is labelled as such when temporary issues with an inbox are picked up, such as an email inbox being full. If this does show on a prospect record, Account Engagement will attempt to deliver to a soft bounced address if they are included in subsequent email sends. That being said, once a prospect has been flagged with 5 soft bounces, Account Engagement will then convert this to a hard bounce.
A hard bounce occurs when a permanent error is picked up, such as; an invalid email address, fake domain, inbox setting restrictions, etc. If a hard bounce is picked up on the first send, then it will be flagged on the prospect record and ignored in subsequent sends to avoid affecting sender deliverability reputation.
Zoe Fisher
Principal Marketing Automation Consultant
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What do you do with bounced prospects and how to prevent them?
Email bounces will impact your deliverability rate. Too many and you risk not only your sender reputation, but Salesforce may get in contact with you to investigate further.
If you are noticing high hard bounce rates, consider adopting a double opt-in strategy. This way you’re asking your prospects to confirm their email twice, initially sending them an email to confirm their subscription before they become part of your full email campaigns.
We recommend that you make time to regularly review your prospect health and consider deleting those that are marked as a hard bounce. You could set up a dynamic list that is collecting your hard bounces and a separate one collecting your soft bounces. This will make it easier for you to review them over time. There are several ways in which Account Engagement can help you better manage your prospects and the health of these records. By reducing your hard bounce emails, you’ll improve your email deliverability and boost your campaign’s success.
If you’d like support with keeping your email marketing campaigns in tip-top shape, contact us today!