What are Hard- and Soft Bounces and How Can I Tell the Difference?

A bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered to the recipient and bounces off the receiving server during delivery. There are generally two types of bounces - hard and soft bounces:

  • A hard bounce occurs when the email cannot be delivered because the email address cannot be delivered because the email address no longer exists or the receiving server blocks the email.
  • A soft bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to a temporary cannot be delivered due to a temporary error. This can occur, for example, if the mailbox is full, the recipient's email server is flooded with various emails, is mails, is down or offline.

Hard and soft bounces are managed automatically by our system and can be determined by these three options:

Would you like more information on this topic? We recommend our
Push article: What is a soft bounce and What is a hard bounce?

Find the reason for the bounce response through export

You can download reasons for bounce messages in the newsletter report. We explain how the export works:

  1. Open the menu on the left under Reports & Analyses the report of your mailing in which the bounces occurred. 
  2. Click Activities > Bounces > Export Bounce Message

     
  3. You will now receive a csv. file that you can open in your spreadsheet program. The reason for the bounce response is shown next to the e-mail address. You can find a few typical bounce messages in our article meaning of the most common bounce messages.

View the reason in individual recipient information

You can also look up the reason for the bounce response in the recipient information, if the recipient has landed on the bounce index due to a newsletter from you.

  1. Open the menu on the left under Receiver your recipient list and open the respective newsletter recipient for whom you would like to view the bounce message.
  2. Click on the Activities tab next to the Profile data tab. 

    If the bounce message is not listed there, the newsletter recipient has landed on the bounce index through another mailing. This can happen because our bounce index is global - across all customers.

Help & Support

If you have any questions or need help, please do not hesitate to contact our Service Team.

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