How long should emails be kept in a bounce email inbox?

Email marketer from Reddit recommends processing bounces daily or weekly. Hard bounces should be removed immediately, while soft bounces can be retried for a short period before being removed.

Email marketer from EmailOctopus Blog suggests that you should monitor your bounce rate regularly and address any issues promptly. While they don't specify a retention period, they imply you shouldn't keep bounces indefinitely; address and remove them to maintain list health.

Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog recommends regularly cleaning your email list of hard bounces to maintain a good sender reputation. They advise removing bounced emails promptly, thus implicitly suggesting against long-term storage.

Email marketer from Mailjet Blog emphasizes the importance of managing bounced emails to ensure deliverability. They suggest removing hard bounces immediately and addressing soft bounces, indicating that long-term storage isn't necessary.

Email marketer from Validity suggests that you should focus on actively monitoring and reducing your bounce rate rather than focusing on how long to store bounced emails. They recommend cleaning lists and optimizing sending practices.

Email marketer from Litmus shares that it's important to analyze bounce reasons to identify issues with your email list or sending practices. They don't explicitly mention storage time, but emphasize the need for prompt analysis and action.

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that some mailbox providers ask for the bounced email header if it bounced due to a filtering rule, but those are uncommon. They suggest storing bounces for about a week.

Email marketer from Gmass states it is important to use automated tools to handle bounces and keep your lists clean. They suggest an ongoing cycle of cleaning your email list from bounced emails, suggesting a short retention period.

Email marketer from Reddit suggests storing bounce data for a short period (1-2 weeks) to analyze trends and identify potential deliverability issues. After that, the data becomes less valuable.

Email marketer from StackExchange suggests that bounce data should be kept for a maximum of 30 days for auditing and troubleshooting purposes, and then purged for data minimization.

Expert from Email Geeks explains that most mailbox providers don't actively bounce mail, they reject it at transaction time, and they want the log line. They mention a few implementations translate every rejected message into a bounced email.

Expert from Email Geeks explains that typically bounces would be sent to bounce processing automation and never hit the disk. Keeping copies in a mailbox for after-the-fact diagnostics is rare in normal use.

Expert from Spam Resource says to remove hard bounces immediately because they will never be delivered. They do not need to be stored.

Expert from Word to the Wise addresses the practice of sending bounces to an inbox, noting it's more common to use automated bounce processing which avoids storing bounces in an inbox. This implies an argument against keeping them for any length of time.

Documentation from MessageBird outlines the importance of understanding bounce codes to improve email deliverability. They highlight the need to analyze and address the root causes of bounces, rather than storing the bounces themselves for extended periods.

Documentation from Microsoft states that Exchange Online handles bounces automatically. Admins can view bounce reports, but the system is designed to manage these failures, suggesting no need for prolonged manual storage of bounced messages.

Documentation from RFC Editor outlines the 'An Extensible Message Format for Delivery Status Notifications'. It discusses that delivery status notifications (DSNs) contain information about delivery problems and should be processed to take corrective action. It does not provide specific guidelines for storage duration, but the purpose is to facilitate automated handling of delivery failures, implying shorter retention for immediate analysis and action.

Documentation from Amazon Web Services (AWS) suggests that bounced emails should be handled programmatically and not stored long-term. AWS recommends setting up automated processes to manage bounces via their Simple Email Service (SES) to maintain sender reputation.