How to tell if soft bounces were eventually delivered?

Marketer from Email Geeks explains to look for a delivered event in your logs that matches the soft bounce and cross-reference in your own logs, especially when using VERP.

Email marketer from Stack Overflow suggests implementing a system to track email delivery status. Check for 'delivered' receipts after the initial soft bounce. If a delivery receipt is found, the email was delivered after retries.

Email marketer from Gmass Blog explains that tracking engagement, such as opens and clicks after the initial soft bounce, could indicate a successful delivery. Check your email marketing platform to see if users are engaging with previously soft bounced emails.

Email marketer from Email Provider Forum responds that using SMTP codes will determine if the mail was delivered, as you can see if the message went from an error to a 250 ok - meaning the email was delivered.

Email marketer from Mailjet Blog explains that you can't directly 'tell' if a soft bounce was eventually delivered. Instead, you should look for a decrease in soft bounce rates over time for a specific campaign. This suggests retries were successful. Also consider analysing delivery logs to confirm.

Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog explains that soft bounces indicate a temporary delivery issue (full inbox, server down) and suggests monitoring bounce codes and engaging those subscribers through alternative channels.

Email marketer from Reddit shares that they check email logs for delivery confirmations after soft bounces. If an email shows as 'delivered' after initially soft bouncing, it means the server retried and succeeded.

Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog shares that soft bounces happen for temporary reasons, like a full inbox or server issues, and that the server should automatically attempt to deliver the mail several times. They also note that if it continues to soft bounce, it will eventually turn into a hard bounce.

Expert from Email Geeks shares her experience that many ESPs don’t report a soft bounce until delivery fails after the designated number of retries. They don’t report anything if it’s still in a queue.

Expert from Email Geeks shares that there is no universally accepted definition of a soft bounce, as ESPs use the term differently. ESPs have the data on whether a message was delivered, including delivery time and retries, so ask the ESP if they make that data available. Also advises to look for a successful delivery attempt to the same recipient from the same campaign to identify a retry being delivered.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests opens and clicks as indicators of delivery.

Expert from Word to the Wise responds to a query that temporary failures are retried, that's part of the normal email process. So, the server keeps trying until either the email is delivered, or it fails to be delivered, in which case you'll likely get a hard bounce.

Documentation from MailerQ explains that delivery notifications indicate successful deliveries. If a delivery notification comes after a soft bounce, it means that MailerQ has successfully delivered the message.

Documentation from RFC 5321 explains transient failures include conditions such as "mailbox is full", "connection refused", or "server down". The sending system should retry delivery.

Documentation from SparkPost explains that analyzing SMTP response codes is crucial. A 250 OK response after a previous soft bounce attempt indicates successful delivery. However, constant monitoring is needed to identify trends.

Documentation from Amazon Web Services explains that to track successful delivery after a soft bounce, you can configure Amazon SES to send bounce and delivery notifications to an Amazon SNS topic. Reviewing the delivery notifications related to previously soft-bounced addresses can indicate successful delivery on a retry.