This article discusses Soft and Hard Bounces and how to manage them. To learn more about Email activity, please see this article: Email Activity
Types of Bounces
There are two main types of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces.
Hard Bounces:
- Invalid Email Address
- Non-Existent Domain
- Blocked by Recipient Server
Soft Bounces:
- Full Inbox
- Temporary Server Issues
For the email addresses that resulted in hard bounces:
- Invalid Email Address: Please remove these from your mailing list. Encourage your users to update their email addresses if they suspect errors.
- Non-Existent Domain: Remove these as they are permanently undeliverable.
-
Blocked by Recipient Server: Reach out to these recipients through other means (e.g., phone, social media) and request that they whitelist your domain or provide a different email address.
Whitelist Email Addresses in an Email Client
For email addresses that resulted in soft bounces:
- Full Inbox: Retry sending the emails after some time. If the issue persists, try contacting the recipient through another channel.
- Temporary Server Issues: Retry sending the emails after a while as these issues usually resolve themselves.
Minimizing Bounces
To minimize future bounces, we recommend the following that you regularly clean your email list by removing addresses that consistently result in bounces. For example, a common reason for bounces is that the email address is no longer valid. For students, you can check with your registrar's office to ensure you have the correct email address. For employers, you can typically verify this information on LinkedIn. Additionally, if the employer has users under the "12twenty Network Contacts" column on the employer profile, you can reach out to those users and invite them to your platform so that you have a current contact with that company.
If you need users to be removed from the bounce list, please reach out to support@12twenty.com with the email address that needs to be removed.