Should I suppress soft bounces from my email lists for better list hygiene?

Email marketer from Reddit shares that after three soft bounces, they would consider suppressing an address. They explain that repeatedly sending to addresses that soft bounce can negatively impact your sending reputation, making it more difficult to reach valid recipients.

Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum explains that it is a best practice to suppress soft bounces after a few attempts. This prevents you from being seen as a spammer.

Marketer from Email Geeks shares that they convert soft bounces from 3 email sends into hard bounces, based on analysis showing these addresses rarely interact and are likely permanent failures.

Email marketer from HubSpot suggests that actively managing your email list to remove inactive contacts and addresses that generate hard or frequent soft bounces can improve your sender reputation and email deliverability. This proactive approach helps to ensure that your emails reach engaged recipients.

Email marketer from Litmus explains that actively monitoring soft bounces is crucial. Litmus advocates for a strategy that includes identifying the causes of soft bounces, segmenting these addresses, and suppressing those that consistently soft bounce to protect sender reputation and improve overall campaign performance.

Email marketer from Moosend explains that a high bounce rate damages sender reputation, leading to deliverability issues. Therefore, cleaning lists by removing invalid email addresses (which contribute to bounces) is crucial for maintaining a healthy list and good deliverability.

Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog explains that a high bounce rate damages sender reputation, leading to deliverability issues. Therefore, cleaning lists by removing invalid email addresses (which contribute to bounces) is crucial for maintaining a healthy list and good deliverability.

Email marketer from Active Campaign suggests actively maintaining your list including suppression of persistent soft bounces will improve sender reputation.

Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests that high mailbox full bounces warrant a review of list health and engagement. Factors such as subscription confirmation and prior engagement should be considered.

Email marketer from Email on Acid shares that while hard bounces should be immediately removed, soft bounces require a more nuanced approach. They suggest segmenting and monitoring soft bounces, retrying sends to these addresses a limited number of times, and suppressing them if they continue to bounce. This prevents deliverability issues caused by repeatedly sending to problematic addresses.

Email marketer from Campaign Monitor details the importance of list hygiene including addressing bounced email addresses that are non-responsive to emails and should be removed to maintain list hygiene.

Expert from Email Geeks warns that Yahoo may soft bounce for reputation reasons, and removing all contacts who soft bounce due to rate limiting could result in losing a significant portion of the list, even if the addresses are valid.

Expert from Email Geeks explains the importance of distinguishing between consecutive and lifetime bounces when managing lists. They suggest temporarily withholding soft bounces from mailings for a week and retrying later, as mailbox full issues may resolve.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that distinguishing between temporary and permanent failures is key and that suppression based on broad categories like 'soft bounce' is risky. You need to understand the actual error codes to make informed decisions about suppression, as some 'soft bounces' might indicate serious deliverability problems, while others are transient.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests that while ESPs may handle soft bounces differently, their default settings are generally adequate, and it's often best to rely on them unless a specific problem arises.

Expert from Word to the Wise says the best answer is 'it depends.' She explains that the error codes are more important than the designation as a hard or soft bounce. Some soft bounces are a temporary error, some soft bounces are a slow bounce or a greylist bounce. She goes on to explain that soft bounces due to authentication or reputation issues may mean there is a more fundamental problem that can have a negative impact on your program.

Documentation from SendGrid explains that both hard and soft bounces should be monitored. Hard bounces should be immediately suppressed as they indicate permanent delivery failures. Soft bounces, while temporary, should be monitored and suppressed if they persist, as repeated soft bounces can also negatively impact sender reputation.

Documentation from Mailchimp explains that cleaning your email list involves removing unsubscribed, inactive, and bounced email addresses. They explain that removing hard bounces immediately is important, and advise monitoring and potentially removing soft bounces after a certain number of attempts, to improve deliverability and engagement.

Documentation from Amazon Web Services (AWS) explains the importance of handling bounces effectively to maintain a good sender reputation. They highlight the need to immediately remove hard bounces and carefully manage soft bounces, with a recommendation to suppress persistent soft bounces to avoid deliverability penalties.

Documentation from Microsoft details that as a sender you should monitor your hard and soft bounce rates and ensure you adhere to the bounce thresholds to avoid deliverability issues.