Soft vs. Hard Bounce Emails, What's the Difference?

1. What is an Email Bounce?

• When an email is rejected by an email server, this results in a "Bounced Email". 
• The recipient will have no opportunity to open and view the content provided. 
• Monitoring the number of bounced emails in a Fugent campaign ensures that the messaging is reaching subscribed contacts.  
• If there is a number of bounced emails in the Fugent email reports after sending a campaign, not all hope is lost with these contacts. 
• Let's look at the main differences between a hard & soft bounced email and what potential steps can be taken after segmenting these email contacts.

2. What is a Soft Bounce?

• A soft bounce has less severity; there is a level of uncertainty around a soft bounce.
• Indicates a temporary delivery issue:
  • The recipient's email server is down or offline.
  • Receiving mailbox is full (over quota).
  • The email message is too large.
• The best practice is to resend another copy of the email in the next 5-7 business days to the soft-bounced email address in order to successfully receive the email content.  

3. What is a Hard Bounce?

• A hard bounce indicates a permanent reason why an email address cannot receive a message. 
• Once an email is displayed as a hard bounce, these email addresses are blacklisted within Fugent and are excluded from all future campaigns in order to keep the contact lists scrubbed. 
• It is recommended to clean all hard-bounced emails from the database to prevent future contact with an undeliverable email address.
• Common reasons for a hard bounce email include:
  • The email address was entered incorrectly.
  • The recipient's email address doesn't exist, moved companies.
  • The domain name doesn't exist.
  • The recipient email server has completely blocked delivery