What are common email bounce messages and what do they mean?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Moosend shares that high bounce rates negatively affect your sender reputation. Sending to invalid email addresses, spam traps, or inactive recipients can lead to being blacklisted.
Email marketer from MailerQ shares that bounce codes are standardized codes returned by mail servers indicating delivery issues. It lists common codes like 550 (mailbox unavailable) and 552 (exceeded storage allocation), explaining the meaning behind each code and how to troubleshoot them.
Email marketer from EmailAcademy explains the importance of cleaning your email list to minimize bounce rates, reducing the risk of deliverability issues. This article also covers the differences between hard and soft bounces
Email marketer from HubSpot emphasizes that regularly cleaning your email list by removing bounced addresses improves sender reputation and deliverability. They also recommend using double opt-in to ensure valid email addresses.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign explains that proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) helps reduce bounce rates by verifying your sending identity to email providers.
Email marketer from Reddit answers that common bounce reasons include invalid email addresses, full inboxes, and blocked senders. Maintaining a clean list is crucial.
Email marketer from Constant Contact explains that hard bounces should be immediately removed from your list, while soft bounces can be retried a few times. It emphasizes list hygiene.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum shares that soft bounces often mean the recipient's server is temporarily unavailable, the mailbox is full, or the message is too large. These can resolve themselves.
Email marketer from SendPulse explains that a hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure (non-existent address), while a soft bounce is a temporary issue (full mailbox, server down). They highlight that too many hard bounces can damage sender reputation.
What the experts say7Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise answers explaining that properly handling bounce messages is crucial for maintaining a healthy sender reputation and avoiding being flagged as a spammer. Ignoring bounces can lead to deliverability issues.
Expert from Email Geeks states that to answer the deliverability question, more data is needed, specifically the reason for the bounces.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains the importance of processing bounce messages and shares tips on how to identify them. This article also lists some common bounce codes.
Expert from Email Geeks requests the specific bounce messages and overall email volume to diagnose the deliverability issue.
Expert from Email Geeks provides examples of bounce messages and emphasizes the need for specific bounce message details to provide assistance.
Expert from Spam Resource details that hard bounces indicate permanent delivery failures, often due to invalid or non-existent email addresses. They emphasize the importance of removing these addresses from your mailing list to protect your sender reputation.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that temporary (soft) bounces can be caused by greylisting, where the receiving server temporarily rejects the email as a spam prevention technique. Legitimate emails are retried and usually delivered successfully.
What the documentation says6Technical articles
Documentation from Amazon AWS explains that bounce notifications are sent when email can't be delivered. It details common bounce types like 'Hard Bounce' (permanent failure) and 'Soft Bounce' (temporary issue) and explains how to interpret the different bounce codes received.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains troubleshooting undeliverable messages, referencing SMTP error codes and providing solutions for different failure scenarios.
Documentation from Mailjet answers with a list of common bounce codes, including 550 (mailbox unavailable), 554 (transaction failed), and 5.1.1 (bad email address). It explains how to interpret them.
Documentation from RFC explains the defined SMTP Enhanced Mail System Status Codes. Provides details on the different classes, subjects, and detail codes to help diagnose delivery issues.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains that SMTP bounce codes, specifically in the 5xx range, indicate permanent failures. For example, 550 indicates the mailbox is unavailable. 4xx codes indicate temporary failures.
Documentation from SparkPost explains different types of bounce classifications. A hard bounce indicates a permanent reason why an email cannot be delivered, such as a non-existent email address. Soft bounces are temporary issues like a full mailbox or a server being temporarily unavailable.