[FAQ]

I’m a marketing assistant for a charity here in Manila, and I’m looking at the report for our latest newsletter campaign.

In the analytics, I see two different metrics: “hard bounces” and “soft bounces.” I’m not sure what the difference is between them. More importantly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about them. Should I be removing both types of emails from our list? I want to make sure we’re managing our list properly.

Thank you for the help!

[Jeff Bullas]

A very important distinction to understand for maintaining a healthy email list.

Short Answer: A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure, meaning the email address is invalid or doesn’t exist. A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure, meaning the email address is valid but the server couldn’t receive the email at that moment.

The key difference is that you must immediately remove hard-bounced addresses from your list, while soft bounces can often be resolved automatically.

A hard bounce is the email equivalent of a “Return to Sender – Address Unknown” notice. It’s a permanent and final failure. This happens for a few reasons: the email address was spelled incorrectly, the domain name isn’t real, or the recipient’s email server has blocked you entirely. This is a critical metric because email providers watch your hard bounce rate very closely. A high rate signals that you have a low-quality list and can seriously damage your sender reputation, which is why your email platform will almost always automatically remove a hard-bounced address from your active list immediately.

A soft bounce is a temporary failure. Think of it like the post office trying to deliver a package but finding nobody home to sign for it. The address is correct, but the delivery couldn’t be completed right now. Common reasons for a soft bounce include the recipient’s inbox being full, your email file being too large, or their server being temporarily offline for maintenance. You don’t need to take immediate action on these. Your email platform will typically try to send the email again a few times over the next couple of days. If an address consistently soft-bounces across several campaigns, the system will eventually treat it as a hard bounce and remove it for you.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Author]

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