Related terms

• Delivery Rate
• Soft bounce
• Bounce rate

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Hard bounce

Return of the message that causes a permanent error, meaning that the delivery will not be retried. The management of this type of error is automatic, and consequently, they are removed from the list to keep it clean. This occurs when the email address does not exist, is invalid, or is unknown.

What happens if I have many "Hard bounces" in my contact lists?

Having a subscriber list filled with email addresses that result in Hard Bounces will cause our bounce rate to increase when we send emails. If this happens but stays within values considered normal, there is no problem. However, if this rate exceeds 5%, we may begin to experience deliverability issues.

As a result, our reputation as senders will decline, and not only will non-deliverable emails not receive our communications, but even those subscribers who are verified and active may receive our emails in their spam folders.

What can I do to reduce "Hard bounces"?

To maintain a clean list of subscribers without non-existent or inactive addresses, it's important to follow different steps: firstly, we should never purchase email address lists. It's highly likely that the list we buy is neither cleaned nor updated, two factors that tend to increase our permanent bounce rate. Furthermore, this practice violates GDPR.

On the other hand, if you have old lists to which you haven't sent emails for a while, it's always beneficial to verify the list before re-engaging with the subscribers. This way, any addresses that have become inactive over time will be detected as "Hard bounces," and we can remove them from our subscriber records to prevent our bounce rate from rising.

Lastly, an interesting option would be to configure our subscription forms as double opt-in. This way, only addresses that truly exist can be added to our lists, and if someone makes a mistake when filling out the subscription form, they won't include a non-existent and error-prone address. An address becomes active only after double verification.

Additionally, if we manage our deliveries through an email marketing platform, all addresses considered Hard Bounces will be deactivated and will not be included in future deliveries."