Soft bounce
Soft bounce
Email Marketing
A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure, like a full mailbox or a busy server, where the email may succeed on a later try.
What is Soft bounce?
Soft bounces come back with a temporary (4xx) error. The sending service usually retries for a while.
Repeated soft bounces matter. One is normal; an address that soft-bounces on every send for weeks is effectively dead and should be suppressed.
Sudden spikes across many addresses at one provider can mean that provider is throttling you, which is an early reputation warning.
Example
A customer's mailbox is full during a holiday; two days later the retried email delivers.
Why Soft bounce Matters
Telling soft from hard bounces keeps you from deleting good contacts or keeping dead ones.
Soft bounce FAQ
When should I remove a soft-bouncing address?
After it keeps soft-bouncing across several sends over a few weeks.
Does a soft bounce hurt my reputation?
One doesn't. Many at once, or the same addresses bouncing for months, does.
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