Why did my email campaign have high soft bounces during US Thanksgiving week?

Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog shares that increased competition and inbox clutter during the holiday season can cause higher bounce rates. Strategies like list cleaning, re-engagement campaigns, and optimizing sending times are recommended to combat this.

Marketer from Email Geeks suggests that 862,548 soft bounces out of 4.3M is surprisingly high and suggests checking if a major provider is bouncing everything. They also mention that mailing a list that hasn't been mailed in a long time could be a factor.

Email marketer from Quora notes that a surge in auto-replies and vacation messages during Thanksgiving contributes to soft bounces. They also advise reviewing sender reputation to ensure deliverability isn't impacted.

Email marketer from Litmus Blog shares that high volume can trigger spam filters. They highlight the importance of authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and monitoring engagement metrics to avoid deliverability problems.

Email marketer from HubSpot Blog explains that increased competition for attention in the inbox during the holiday season impacts deliverability. They advise to focus on email list segmentation, improving subject lines, and optimizing sending times.

Email marketer from StackExchange suggests the temporary server issues during peak sending times like Thanksgiving week can cause deferrals and soft bounces. They recommend implementing retry mechanisms to handle temporary failures.

Email marketer from Reddit r/EmailMarketing shares that high soft bounces during Thanksgiving week are likely due to increased email volume and people being out of office. They recommend segmenting your list and re-sending to non-openers later.

Email marketer from ActiveCampaign suggests that soft bounces can be caused by temporary server issues, full inboxes, or spam filter blocks during peak sending times like Thanksgiving week. They recommend analyzing bounce codes and adjusting sending practices.

Email marketer from Campaign Monitor Blog explains that increased email volume during Thanksgiving week can lead to deliverability issues and higher bounce rates. They advise warming up IP addresses and sending to engaged subscribers to maintain good sender reputation.

Marketer from Email Geeks, after Nout Boctor-Smith shares client GPT data, Tim confirms that a small spike in delivery failures that has since subsided, and consistent IP/domain reputation suggests the issues were likely due to the volume spike that day.

Email marketer from Mailjet Blog suggests that higher bounce rates during the holiday season, particularly around Thanksgiving, are common due to increased email traffic and full inboxes. They recommend monitoring bounce rates and segmenting lists to mitigate the impact.

Marketer from Email Geeks explains that the "exceeded max time" bounce is generated from the sender's MTA, not the receiver's, and suggests checking ESP logs for deferral messages and Google Postmaster Tools for delivery failures.

Marketer from Email Geeks indicates that Gmail made changes to bounce messages around November 20, resulting in an increase in "storage space" bounces. Brad also clarifies if the 862k bounces were unique addresses or included duplicates.

Marketer from Email Geeks shares a method to analyze bounces by exporting them to Excel, filtering by receiver domains, grouping by domain, sorting by count, and then checking bounce codes for the highest-count domains.

Expert from Email Geeks explains that in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, soft bounces often mean blocked bounces, but the account isn't configured to separate them properly.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that deliverability often declines during the holiday season. This isn't about Thanksgiving directly, but the general trend applies. Causes include increased overall email volume, which puts strain on filters and infrastructure, and more aggressive filtering due to the higher risk of scams and unwanted mail during the period.

Expert from SpamResource explains that while they don't have a direct answer to specifically Thanksgiving week bounce issues, they focus on email deliverability, reputation and engagement, which if not considered correctly then this can cause issues especially around peak sending times when filters are more sensitive

Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help shares that high bounce rates in Google Workspace can stem from several issues, including sending to invalid email addresses, exceeding sending limits, or having a poor sender reputation. Google recommends checking bounce messages for details.

Documentation from RFC 5321 explains that temporary SMTP errors (4xx codes) can indicate temporary issues like server overload or temporary unavailability. Repeated 4xx errors might result in delayed delivery or bounces.

Documentation from DMARC.org explains that implementing DMARC helps prevent spoofing and improves email deliverability. They highlight DMARC's role in instructing email providers how to handle unauthenticated email, reducing bounce rates and improving inbox placement.

Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains that Non-Delivery Reports (NDRs) can indicate temporary issues such as server issues, recipient mailbox full, or auto-replies. They recommends reviewing the specific error codes in the NDR to diagnose the cause.