What is a bounced email?
Also referred to as bounce, a bounced email, as the name suggests, is an email that gets rejected by the recipient’s mail server for whatever reason.
There are two types of bounces: soft and hard. A soft bounce happens when there is a temporary issue—such as a server outage or a full inbox—preventing the recipient from receiving any incoming emails. A hard bounce, on the other hand, happens when the issue is permanent, such as a non-existent or deleted email address.
In most cases, an email service provider will consider a soft bounce a hard bounce if the email still fails to go through after three attempts.
If you wish to learn more about the concept, please check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What is the difference between a bounced email and a bounce back email?
The main difference between a bounced email and a bounce back email is their trigger.
As we have seen in the previous section, a bounced email happens when an email you sent gets rejected by the recipient’s mail server for whatever reason.
A bounce-back email, on the other hand, is a type of email that a company automatically sends out whenever a customer purchases something from them. It is designed to encourage the customer to make a follow-up purchase either right then and there or at a later date. It typically uses related product suggestions, discount codes, timed deals, or a combination of the three as an incentive.
Question #2: What causes a bounced email?
A bounced email typically happens due to the following reasons:
- Non-existent recipient email address
- Incorrect recipient email address
- Insufficient recipient inbox space
- File size attachment limits on recipient’s mail server
- Server outages
But your reputation can also affect your ability to successfully send out emails to people. If your emails are consistently flagged as spam by your recipients, then there is a big chance a lot of your emails will bounce. The same thing will happen if your sending domain receives a restrictive DMARC record.
Another reason your emails might bounce is if they contain flagged content, regardless of whether you intentionally or accidentally put it there.
Question #3: How to identify it?
You can easily identify a bounced email by its contents. In most cases, your email service provided would tell you outright that your email bounced and then specify the reason along with the following information:
- A unique message ID
- The time and date your email bounced
- The hostname and IP address of your email service provider
Question #4: How can I avoid getting it?
In most cases, if you are an individual user, you can avoid getting a bounced email by simply:
- Make sure you type the correct recipient email address
- Make sure you do not attach massive files to your emails
- Not replying to email addresses with a ‘No Reply’ tag
If you are a business, however, avoiding bounced emails takes a bit more work. Below are a couple of tips to help you get started:
- Implement a double opt-in process for collecting emails
- Only send out emails to people who have opted-in to receive them
- Regularly delete unengaged email addresses from your list
- Regularly delete email addresses that constantly bounce from your list
If you want to further minimise your risk for getting bounced emails, you can also take steps to protect your sending reputation, such as:
- Not buying email lists
- Regularly verifying if the people on your list still want to receive your emails
- Running spam checks on the emails you send out
- Make sure you only send out relevant content
- Not sending too many emails