Our blog, D Brief, shares succint expert advice, trends, tips, and ideas for marketing communications tactics—focusing on print, Web, social media, and promotional products—from a corporate visual identity perspective. We welcome your thoughts so we can learn from each other.
What Are Hard Bounces and What Should We Do with Them?
Today we received this question from a client regarding the company’s E-Newsletter mail list: What Are Hard Bounces and What Should We Do with Them?
A: When your E-News is rejected by someone’s email server, it’s called a bounce. There are different types of bounces, depending on the reason for the bounce. Keep track of your bounce numbers to ensure that your E-Newsletter campaigns are reaching your audience, and that you’re following spam laws.
Hard Bounces
A hard bounce has a permanent reason an email won’t reach its indented recipient. This can include:
- Email address does not exist
- Domain name does not exist
- Subscriber email server has blocked delivery
If there are any hard bounces on your subscriber list, those emails need to be removed. The reason: If sending too many hard bounces, you get a lower quality score from serves. That in turn can increase the number of hard bounces. That is, servers will start to view you as a regular sender of spam. This Hubspot article advises: “Try to keep your total bounce rate under 2% — much higher than that, and you’ll start noticing some deliverability issues.”
Soft Bounces
Soft bounces mean there is a temporary delivery issue. Since soft bounces may go through, keep those on your e-mail list, unless these turn into hard bounces at some point.
At D Media, we help clients create, launch and manage E-Newsletters and E-Blasts. From content to design, from scheduling to distribution, contact D Media for your digital tactical marketing needs.
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