What is the best practice for cleaning up soft bounces in email marketing?

Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that not all soft bounces are equal, as some may be due to IP spam reputation rather than the email address itself. Suggests some should not be counted in the "soft bounce counter".

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that they remove emails that soft bounce more than ~95% of the time in the last 3 months, especially those from garbage domains or consistently full mailboxes.

Email marketer and expert from Email Geeks explain that not every delivery failure is due to spam or a bad address. Benjamin uses bounce categories, incrementing the soft bounce counter for reasons like "mailbox full" but not for "invalid-sender" or "spam-related" bounces. Laura highlights that not every delivery failure is either a spam block or bad address.

Email marketer from Neil Patel Blog emphasizes the importance of regularly cleaning your email list to remove inactive subscribers, hard bounces, and soft bounces to maintain a healthy sender reputation and improve email deliverability. Cleaning leads to a better ROI.

Email marketer from Litmus emphasizes that while hard bounces should be removed immediately, soft bounces require a more nuanced approach. They suggest monitoring soft bounce reasons and suppressing contacts that consistently experience soft bounces due to full mailboxes or other persistent issues.

Email marketer from Moosend explains that soft bounces are temporary and can be a sign that the email server is temporarily unavailable, or the recipient’s inbox is full and therefore they should be treated differently than hard bounces. Addresses with repeated soft bounces should be removed.

Email marketer from Reddit explains that a common practice is to suppress or remove email addresses after a certain number of soft bounces (e.g., 5-7) within a specific timeframe (e.g., 30-60 days).

Email marketer from Sendinblue advises setting a threshold for soft bounces. If an email address consistently soft bounces (e.g., 3-5 times), it should be removed from the list, as it indicates a potential problem with the address or mailbox.

Email marketer from ActiveCampaign recommends automating the process of cleaning up soft bounces using their platform's features. Set up rules to automatically unsubscribe contacts after a certain number of soft bounces to ensure list hygiene.

Email marketer from Email Geeks mentions that their team used the same approach as Benjamin (3 consecutive soft bounces over 21 days) at SFMC. They believe it balances hygiene with the understanding that bounces aren't always permanent.

Email marketer from HubSpot stresses the importance of email list hygiene, including managing bounces. They recommend segmenting soft bounces and monitoring them closely, removing contacts if the soft bounces become frequent or persistent.

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares their rule of "at least 3, consecutive soft bounces over at least 21 days" as a reasonable approach for soft bounce cleanup.

Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum explains soft bounces can occur because of a full mailbox, a server being down temporarily, or the message being too large, and because of this recommends you should not immediately remove soft bounces, instead monitor the user and remove after 3-4 soft bounces.

Email marketer from Constant Contact explains that soft bounces typically occur when the recipient’s inbox is full, the server is down, or the email message is too large. To keep your contact list healthy, remove email addresses after a certain number of soft bounces.

Email marketer from Email on Acid highlights the negative impact of high bounce rates on sender reputation and deliverability. They recommend actively managing both hard and soft bounces to maintain a healthy email list. Soft bounces should be monitored, and contacts removed if issues persist.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that when it comes to bounce processing, the decision about how long to keep trying is up to the sender. Senders need to decide how long it makes sense to keep trying to deliver mail. If the address never accepts mail, at some point it makes sense to stop trying. When to stop trying depends on the mail stream and the customer.

Expert from Spam Resource emphasizes that cleaning up bounces is crucial for maintaining good deliverability. They explain that a high bounce rate signals to mailbox providers that you may not be practicing proper list hygiene, which can lead to your emails being filtered as spam. Monitoring and acting on both hard and soft bounces is therefore essential.

Expert from Email Geeks advises that if tracking soft bounces as "we could not deliver to this address", choose a number of consecutive failures (5 is probably fine) and reset the counter each time a message successfully delivers.

Documentation from Amazon SES outlines how to set up bounce notifications and provides best practices for handling both hard and soft bounces to maintain a good sender reputation. SES recommends monitoring soft bounces and taking action if they become persistent.

Documentation from Mailchimp explains that Mailchimp automatically handles bounces, but it's important to understand the difference between hard and soft bounces. Soft bounces indicate a temporary delivery issue and Mailchimp recommends monitoring them and removing subscribers if they persist.

Documentation from RFC Editor describes Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Enhanced Status Codes for email delivery failures, offering insight into reasons behind soft bounces and how to interpret them. This helps system administrators to understand the root cause of email delivery issues.

Documentation from SparkPost details the different types of bounces and how to interpret them. They explain that soft bounces are temporary and often due to mailbox issues, but persistent soft bounces should be investigated and potentially removed from the list.