REmessenger keeps track of your email bounces – this is when you send an email, but for some reason it is undeliverable and instead it is ‘bounced’ back, usually with a message indicating the reason.
There are two types of bounces:
1. Soft
A soft bounce is where the problem is most likely temporary, for example, the recipient’s email box is full.
2. Hard
A hard bounce means that the email can never be delivered using the available details. Usually this is because the email address is invalid in some way, perhaps the recipient does not have a mail box at the mail server, or the mail server itself does not exist.
If you have bounces, REmessenger will indicate these on your Contact Lists. The red ‘Stop’ symbol indicates we have recorded a hard bounce, and we will not send any more messages to that email address. A Contact that has experienced soft bounces is highlighted with a yellow triangle. You can hover your mouse over the symbols for further details.
If one of your Contacts returns a hard bounce we will not send any more email to that email address. REmessenger can be penalised by the email reputation and anti-spam monitoring companies if we continue to send emails to a non-existent email address. We work hard to keep our reputation with these companies as strong as possible, because this increases the reliability of delivery of your emails. Some large email and ISP companies, such as AOL, Comcast and Microsoft will penalize email senders if their reputation scores are not good – or even refuse to accept messages for their users.
For soft bounces we’ll continue to try and deliver your emails to them, however, if a high number of soft bounces occur for an email address we may discontinue sending, usually once we reach seven or more bounces over a period of time.
Image: Samuel Huron
