You've sent an email campaign and are reviewing the send report. You notice that some recipients didn't receive the email, and their status shows as "bounced."
This article explains what that status means:
Reasons for a bounce
Soft bounce
The email was temporarily rejected by the server, but a retry will likely succeed. If the email no longer shows a bounced status on subsequent attempts, it means the recipient did receive it.
Here are the most common reasons for a soft bounce:
- The recipient's mailbox is full,
- The recipient's email server is offline or temporarily unavailable,
- The email message is too large,
- The recipient's domain is temporarily blocking incoming messages.
This is especially common with certain email providers that readily place emails on a "greylist": sfr.fr, orange.fr, free.fr, laposte.fr, yahoo.fr, wanadoo.fr.
Why does an Email Service Provider (ESP) reject certain emails?
ESPs — SFR, Orange, Free, Gmail, etc. — provide email services and set their own deliverability rules. They decide, for example, what gets flagged as spam. It makes sense that they don't share the exact formula behind these rules, since doing so would make it too easy for spammers to game the system.
These rules change regularly at the ESPs' discretion. They're impossible to predict and affect all email marketing platforms — Springly included.
At Springly, whenever we detect a rule change, we do everything we can to reach out to ESPs, maximize deliverability, and keep you informed of the new requirements.
For example, @laposte.net addresses reject emails that contain links to non-secure websites (http rather than https).
Hard bounce
This means the server has permanently rejected the email. The most common reasons are:
- The email address doesn't exist,
- There's a typo in the address (e.g., jean@email.com instead of jean@gmail.com),
- The recipient's mailbox has flagged the email as spam.
Email addresses that result in a hard bounce are marked as invalid, and future emails will not be sent to them. This protects your sender reputation and the overall deliverability of your email campaigns.
What to do about a high number of bounces
What to do if a valid email address is showing a bounce
If you notice hard bounces on your email campaign, the first thing to check is the unsubscribed list.
For every group created under Community > Groups, a corresponding list is created under Emailing > Lists.
All community-linked lists in this section are divided into four parts:
- Recipients: everyone on the list
- Unsubscribed: people who have opted out of your communications
- No email address: people whose email address hasn't been entered
- Emails identified as invalid: people whose emails result in a hard bounce
Check the unsubscribed list to see whether any hard-bounced addresses appear there.
To re-subscribe people who have a hard bounce but a valid email address, simply check the boxes next to the addresses in the Unsubscribed section and click the "Re-subscribe" button, as shown below:
Important: if someone has intentionally unsubscribed, they don't want to hear from you. Don't re-subscribe them without their explicit consent — otherwise the same pattern will repeat and your sender reputation will suffer.
If the email address is valid but keeps bouncing, the issue lies somewhere else.
Bounce details are now available from:
- the recipient list, under "Emails identified as invalid",
- the summary page of your sent email campaign,
- the person's profile page.
A "View bounce reason" link provides an explanation along with tips to resolve the issue.
Sometimes the recipient's email server doesn't automatically send a bounce reason. In that case, we'll show it as unknown. If you need help, contact our Support team at support.assoconnect.com > "Emailing and communication", and include the campaign name and the email address in question. Once we receive your request, we'll investigate.
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