Sudden increase in soft bounces

Gwendolyn Chambers:

In March we had noticeably higher rates of soft bounces than in previous months. Is there a way to run a report to see soft bounces with specific email providers? I would also be interested in any other insight on what could cause a sudden jump in soft bounces. 

Gwendolyn Chambers:

Ryan O'Keefe:

Gwendolyn Chambers:

In March we had noticeably higher rates of soft bounces than in previous months. Is there a way to run a report to see soft bounces with specific email providers? I would also be interested in any other insight on what could cause a sudden jump in soft bounces. 

Gwendolyn,


There are reporter writer reports that allow you to see email message performance by domain.  If you select or filter by soft bounces this will get you closer to what you are looking for in terms of soft bounces with email providers.  If not, then there is always a custom report can be created within our services team for your site.


As for soft bounces, there are a couple of different reasons an email can soft bounce.

• Mailbox is full (over quota).
• Recipient email server is down or offline.
• Email message is too large.

Just know that soft bounces are indicative of a deliverability problem and consistently targeting soft bounces could possibly cause issues if there's an IP block or something else like server issues which over time could hurt your sender reputation.

 

 

Thank you, the domain report is helpful. It appears that the majority of soft bouces were coming from Earthlink.net. Maybe they were having issues. I'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks!

 

Gwendolyn Chambers:

Ryan O'Keefe:

Gwendolyn Chambers:

Ryan O'Keefe:

Gwendolyn Chambers:

In March we had noticeably higher rates of soft bounces than in previous months. Is there a way to run a report to see soft bounces with specific email providers? I would also be interested in any other insight on what could cause a sudden jump in soft bounces. 

Gwendolyn,


There are reporter writer reports that allow you to see email message performance by domain.  If you select or filter by soft bounces this will get you closer to what you are looking for in terms of soft bounces with email providers.  If not, then there is always a custom report can be created within our services team for your site.


As for soft bounces, there are a couple of different reasons an email can soft bounce.

• Mailbox is full (over quota).
• Recipient email server is down or offline.
• Email message is too large.

Just know that soft bounces are indicative of a deliverability problem and consistently targeting soft bounces could possibly cause issues if there's an IP block or something else like server issues which over time could hurt your sender reputation.

 

 

Thank you, the domain report is helpful. It appears that the majority of soft bouces were coming from Earthlink.net. Maybe they were having issues. I'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks!

 

I do want to clear up the confusion around soft bounces and hard bounces.  Soft bounces are definitely indicative of a deliverability problem, but they aren't rolled over to hard bounces.  You should definitely evaluate internal processes for retrying soft bounces as continual retries over several months with no engagement would not be beneficial to your sender reputation.

 

 How does one evaluate internal proceses for retrying soft bounces? Our unsubscribe rate seems to have leveled off a bit. What is a normal rate generally?