When working with email marketing, one of the most common problems is to see high percentage of email bounces. In most email marketing initiative, email bounces usually consist of 5% of the overall recipients. In worst scenario, you could see a major failure of email marketing when the bounces reach more then 80%. The bounces come in hard and soft ways that leaves email marketers.

First of all, let’s get to understand the few forms of hard and soft bounces. A hard bounce is when an email address does not exist or has bad destination mailbox address or the mailbox has been moved to elsewhere. This can also be caused by the email hosting provider that does not accept network messaging. So hard bounce is usually referred as email that is being returned by a recipient’s mail server that detects any of the above mentioned failure.

A soft bounce happens when there is a temporary problem that has to do with the recipient’s email address or your email system. One of the most common scenarios is when the recipient’s email is not able to receive any email when it is full. Other reasons for soft bounces could be caused by undefined system problem or even when there are too many recipients.

To avoid hard or soft bounces, ensure that all emails are valid. Removing invalid emails from time to time would help reduce the hard bounce rates. Some email marketing service allows you to automate this process from time to time to have the invalid email addresses removed for you. You can also add an unsubscribe option to the email that can bypass some email anti-spam system. Another important tip to avoid email bounces is prevent from using high attachment files. Some server will automatically reject certain emails that contain heavy files.