What is a soft bounce
Soft bounce means that the email address was valid and the email reached recipient server. However, the server could not deliver it to the address for reasons like the following:
- email address was full and could not receive more emails
- the server rejected the email because it was too large
Soft bounces do not have an effect on the email address and user profile of the recipient. However, 5 consecutive soft bounce events will become a hard-bounce in order to keep our lists clean.
What is a hard bounce
Hard bounces usually happen when the email address does not exist. It can be invalid, the domain might be wrong or the email address does not exist.
When such hard bounce event reaches our servers we take the following action:
- unsubscribe the user from receiving any other emails
- mark the user as hard-bounced, in order not to easily subscribe him again.
Another possibility is to have the hard-bounce triggered by 5 consecutive hardbounces (See above)
Another option is for the receiving email server of the recipient to change configurations and not accept emails from the ESP used for sending. This is quite rare, but it might happen.