What is an email bounce?
An email bounce is simply an email that cannot be delivered to the intended recipient. For many various reasons, email servers may reject emails. Bounced emails are either a permanent failure to deliver the email or temporary failure to deliver the email, based on conditions with the recipient mail server.
Bounces can occur for many reasons but are often caused by contacts that have gone stale or address that were improperly entered or imported.
Internet service providers (ISPs) have limits for bounces, unsubscribes, spam reports, and AdvisorStream is required to enforce these limits. Bounce rate limits vary depending on the ISPs and email providers, and they change throughout the year based on incoming email volume. Since these limits are variable, and to avoid giving too much information to spammers, ISPs do not publicly release their limits.
Where can I find a list of email addresses that bounced?
In your AdvisorStream account, head to your Contacts
Causes of emails bouncing
There are several reasons why your emails may bounce, we've outlines 9 below:
1. A non-existent email address
The email address could have a typo or the person with the address may have left the organization. There’s also a chance that the contact gave a false email address.
If you have an existing relationship with the contact, try to reach the contacts by other means to confirm the address.
2. Your contact list is outdated
If you see high bounce rates or are curious why an email bounced it may be because your contact list is not regularly used, it may include stale email addresses.
Stale addresses are either invalid or belong to contacts who signed up for your email marketing a long time ago and haven't been sent to regularly.
3. Your import had formatting errors
Review the list of email addresses that bounced to determine if an email address was entered incorrectly for example you may have an extra letter or character in the email address. Formatting errors in the email address field can cause hard bounces.
4. The recipient has an auto-responder or vacation reply
When employees go on vacation or will be unavailable, they can set up an autoresponder to tell contacts about it. If the email address you are trying to reach has an autoresponder, you will see a bounce, but the message may still be delivered after the autoresponder is turned off.
5. The sending IP address you are using has been blocked
Even if everything is fine with the message itself, the IP address you are using to send it could be blocked. This block can occur if you are suspected of spamming or email fraud or if your company has developed a bad reputation. You can avoid this problem with opt-ins and never buying lists.
6. The email was blocked by the server (unable to relay)
Emails can be blocked by the receiving server for many reasons. Many servers will block messages over a certain size, emails that use the wrong format, and messages that appear to be spam. Mail servers can block your email also if the “From” address might not match an account on the email server. Reviewing your messages carefully, making your images as small as possible, and following best practices can help you avoid this problem. Please note that the mail server may block your email also for “technical” problems that you can’t have any control over, eg. “Out of memory”, “Connection timed out” and “Resources temporarily unavailable”
7. The receiving server is overloaded or temporarily unavailable
Servers can only handle so much traffic. Sometimes an email will bounce due to an overloaded or unavailable server.
A server that can’t be found could have crashed or been under maintenance, so this may just mean waiting to send the email to the address again. However, if this email address repeatedly bounces on multiple emails, it may mean the server is gone for good.
8. The receiving mail is full
Few email providers allow unlimited storage. If your contact has so many emails in their inbox that they can’t receive any more, your emails will bounce back until there’s space for them. When a user reaches their predetermined limit, all future emails will bounce.
9. The email has been blocked by the recipient
Individuals can block emails from senders they no longer want to hear from. If that has happened to you, a bounce will be generated.
Comments
0 comments