What are the best practices for managing hard and soft bounces in daily email campaigns?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Digital Marketer shares that for soft bounces, a re-engagement campaign could be the solution. This would aim to have the recipent engage to resubscribe and acknowledge their subscription.
Email marketer from Mailjet emphasizes the importance of removing hard bounces immediately from the mailing list to protect sender reputation and improve deliverability. They also suggest monitoring soft bounces and suppressing them if they persist over time.
Marketer from Email Geeks warns about potential issues when classifying bounces, explaining that substring searches can lead to misinterpretations of bounce codes, such as mistaking a 5.7.606 (an IP block) for a permanent hard bounce (5.7.6).
Email marketer from Litmus suggests that monitoring bounce rates is a key performance indicator (KPI) for email marketing campaigns. They advise setting up alerts for when bounce rates exceed a certain threshold, enabling immediate intervention.
Marketer from Email Geeks agrees with adjusting bounce rules and suggests that with decent rules in place, bouncers should be filtered out regardless of soft or hard bounces based on the suggested rules.
Email marketer from Gmass responds that you need to keep your list as clean as possible. High bounce rates and spam reports can cause your domain and IP address to be blacklisted.
Email marketer from Reddit recommends segmenting email lists based on engagement and sending more frequently to engaged users. Addresses that soft bounce repeatedly should be moved to a less frequent send segment or removed completely.
Email marketer from Email On Acid recommends a multi-faceted approach to bounce management including immediate removal of hard bounces, implementing a feedback loop to monitor complaints, and regularly cleaning lists to remove inactive subscribers.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor emphasizes the need for regular list cleaning to remove inactive or invalid email addresses, improving deliverability and sender reputation. They suggest removing hard bounces and monitoring soft bounces for continued issues.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares their opinion that if a mailbox has been full for 10 days without being cleaned, it should be considered abandoned.
Email marketer from Sendinblue advises that hard bounces should be removed immediately from your list. They recommend monitoring soft bounces and removing them from your contact list after a certain period of time.
Marketer from Email Geeks advises against setting up arbitrary rules and suggests carefully examining bounce reasons to identify specific issues, rather than relying solely on "hard bounce" and "soft bounce" classifications.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks emphasizes that understanding how bounces are classified is crucial for determining how to handle future mail to that address, as the reason for the failure is important for making informed decisions.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that effective bounce management is critical for maintaining list hygiene and sender reputation. It involves immediate removal of hard bounces and careful handling of soft bounces, as neglecting this aspect can lead to deliverability issues and blacklisting.
Expert from Email Geeks raises the question of how to handle receivers that do not return eSMTP codes and whether bounce classification varies by ISP.
Expert from Spamresource.com explains that proper bounce processing is an integral part of running an email campaign, as a poor process can significantly hurt email deliverability.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Mailchimp describes hard bounces as permanent delivery failures which you should immediately clean from your list, and soft bounces as temporary issues. Mailchimp automatically handles bounces in their email campaigns.
Documentation from Amazon SES states that you should immediately remove email addresses from your mailing list when they cause a hard bounce. Monitor soft bounces and have a plan to reduce the number of soft bounces that you send to. Too many soft bounces can negatively impact your sender reputation.
Documentation from SparkPost explains that hard bounces are permanent delivery failures and should be removed immediately. Soft bounces are temporary issues that may resolve over time but should be monitored.