Email Marketing Bounce Types

Email Marketing Bounce Types

Soft Bounce vs. Hard Bounce

There are two types of bounces that you can receive – a soft bounce or a hard bounce.


A soft bounce means that the email address was valid and the email message reached the recipient’s mail server. However, it bounced back because:

  • The mailbox was full (the user is over their quota)
  • The server was down
  • The message was too large for the recipient’s inbox


A hard bounce means that the message has been permanently rejected either because:

  • The email address is  invalid
  • The email addresses doesn’t exist