We got a questions today from one of our clients when we gave them some analytics around their latest email campaign. What is a hard bounce v. a soft bounce?

Hard Bounce

A hard bounce in email marketing is when an email sent to a client is sent back because the email is permanently disabled. For example, someone gives you a fraudulent email address or someone leaves a job and that email address is shut down.

Soft Bounce

A soft bounce in email marketing is when an email appears to be good but the email bounce back to the sender. There are two causes to this, the first is the recipients email address is full and the second could be an auto response like an out of office, or sorry this person doesn’t work here anymore.

There are a number of ways to avoid getting the dreaded bounce.

• Make sure people give you a good email address by offering them something they can only get from you via email like a coupon or free download
• Regularly use your email list. If you let your email list grow stale, the number of bounces will increase very quickly.

Lastly, don’t hesitate to have someone give your email marketing an evaluation so you can see what might get fixed.