What Is a Soft Bounce and How to Resolve It (2025)

When working with Mailchimp for your email marketing campaigns, you may have encountered the term "soft bounce."

This refers to an email that couldn't be delivered to the recipient's inbox but only temporarily.

Understanding what constitutes a soft bounce and distinguishing it from a hard bounce is vital. 

Your email bounce rates are important metrics in assessing the health of your email marketing campaigns. 

**Certify that your marketing emails are reaching their intended recipients effectively. **

Key Takeaways

• Soft bounces are temporary delivery issues that Mailchimp retries before marking as a hard bounce.
• A healthy email campaign monitors the bounce rate to gauge list accuracy and content relevance.
• Reducing soft bounces can be achieved by regularly updating email lists and sending pertinent content.

Understanding Email Bounce Rate

When you send out an email campaign through Mailchimp, not all emails will reach their intended recipients. 

This is reflected in your email bounce rate, a crucial metric that impacts the performance and deliverability of your campaigns.

Now, let's break down the bounce rates into two distinct categories and consider the factors that affect them.

Differentiating Soft and Hard Bounces

Soft Bounces:

• Refer to emails that have a temporary delivery issue.
• They occur for reasons such as a recipient's mailbox being full or a server temporarily being down.
• Soft bounces are usually resolved without your intervention, as emails are often delivered once the issue is fixed.

Hard Bounces:

• Emails that have permanent delivery failures.
• These are caused by more serious issues like an invalid email address or email domain.
• Unlike soft bounces, hard bounce email addresses should be removed from your mailing list to maintain list hygiene and deliverability.

Key Factors Influencing Bounce Rates

Several factors can affect your email bounce rates:

• Regularly updating your email list will minimize bounces due to outdated or invalid addresses.
• Content of your emails also matters; if it triggers spam filters, this could increase your bounce rate.
• Server or technical issues on the recipient’s end could temporarily inflate your soft bounce numbers.

To manage your bounce rates effectively, pay close attention to the reasons provided by Mailchimp for each bounce. 

Remember, maintaining a low bounce rate is essential for successful email marketing campaigns.

Causes of Soft Bounces

In Mailchimp, soft bounces are issues that temporarily prevent emails from being delivered to your subscribers.

Common Reasons for Soft Bounces

When your email can't be delivered immediately but might succeed at a later time, it's considered a soft bounce. Various reasons can lead to soft bounces (full list of reasons for soft bounces):

• Full Mailbox: If the recipient's inbox is full, your email won't go through until they clear some space.
• Email Size Too Large: Emails exceeding the recipient's server limits get delayed or rejected.
• Server Issues: Occasionally, a recipient's email server might be down or undergoing maintenance.
• Message Rate Limits: A receiving server can restrict the number of emails a user can receive per hour or day.

Technical Aspects of Recipient's Mail Server

• Spam and Content Filters: If your email triggers filters for potential spam complaints or undesirable content, it may be deferred.
• DMARC Policies: A strict DMARC policy implementation may result in your emails soft bouncing.
• Changes in Email Policies: Servers may update their policies, causing previously successful emails to soft bounce.

By addressing temporary issues like a full mailbox or tweaks within the recipient's email server, you increase the chances of successful future deliveries. 

Your Mailchimp account information can aid in identifying patterns in soft bounces, helping you pinpoint and rectify the most common reasons for non-delivery.

Effects on Email Marketing Campaigns

Understanding the direct impact of soft bounces on your email marketing campaigns is important.

Impact of Soft Bounces on Deliverability

To recap, a soft bounce represents a temporary issue with email delivery, such as a recipient's full inbox or a server that is temporarily down.

It's important to monitor soft bounces because if an email address continues to encounter them, it may be treated as a hard bounce and removed from your list. 

This can diminish the size of your active audience and consequently affect your email performance.

If you do notice multiple soft bounces in a certain audience, it may be easier to delete the audience.

Additionally, a consistently high bounce rate—including both soft and hard bounces—can damage your sender's reputation. 

This can lead to a higher likelihood of your emails being flagged as spam, which harms your overall email deliverability.

How Bounce Rates Relate to Campaign Success

Bounce rates are a critical metric in evaluating email marketing campaigns. 

They provide insight into the health of your email list and the effectiveness of your email delivery infrastructure.

• Low bounce rates**:** Indicate a well-maintained list with accurate email addresses and a robust delivery system.
• High bounce rates: Signal outdated or incorrect information, potentially leading to decreased campaign success.

Bounce rates also indirectly affect your conversion rates. 

Emails that don't reach the inbox cannot drive conversions. 

It's in your best interest to maintain bounce rates that are as low as possible. This ensures that your emails reach potential customers and influence their purchasing decisions.

How To See Who Bounced

Navigate to the "Reports" section on the left navigation.

From there, select "View Report" next to the campaign you wish to see data.

From there, you will be able to see who opened, clicked, bounced, and unsubscribed.

Click on the number above the heading "Bounced". 

On this page, below the statistics of bounces, you will see which recipients bounced. 

Right next to their name, it will tell you the type of bounce that occurred.

Scroll over the right, you will see "Bounce Reason".

Don't get overwhelmed by all of the code that pops up. We'll show you where to look.

Find the break within the code that says "The Mail System".

Right below that, it will show you which email bounced, and the reasoning. 

Below, you will see the email bounced due to "Host or domain name not found". This means that the domain "umail.com" is a bad domain name.

7 Ways to Reduce Soft Bounces

Here's the good news. We have provided 7 best practices to resolve these errors.

Reducing soft bounces in your email campaigns ensures a healthy email list and preserves your good sender reputation. 

By implementing these solutions, you can feel confident in the quality of your email list.

List Management Techniques

Regular List Cleaning: Periodically remove inactive or invalid email addresses from your list. A "cleaned contact" implies that the contact is vetted and less likely to result in a soft bounce.

Optimize Signup Forms: Ensure your signup form collects accurate information by using double opt-in methods. This will help maintain a quality subscriber base and reduce the likelihood of email delivery issues.

Monitor Engagement: Keep a close eye on how subscribers interact with your emails. If a contact hasn't engaged in a long time, it may be a sign to re-engage them or remove them from the list. Be sure to export your contacts before deleting them.

Use a Reliable Email Service Provider: Partner with email service providers known for high email deliverability rates, as they often have features to help you maintain a healthy list and prevent bounces.

Improving Email Content and Structure

Test Email Sending: Before sending out a campaign to everyone on your list, send test emails to addresses with different email service providers to ensure your content is delivered correctly.

Reduce Email Size: Keep the email size under the threshold limit set by receivers; oversized emails tend to soft bounce.

Optimize Subject Lines: Create a concise and engaging subject line that encourages high open rates and reflect the email content accurately.

Remember, these practices are not one-off tasks but ongoing efforts. 

Ensure your email marketing remains effective and your email message reaches your intended audience.

Mailchimp Specific Advice

Here's how you can tackle Mailchimp bounce codes and utilize its features to enhance your email performance.

Navigating Mailchimp Bounce Codes

Mailchimp classifies bounced emails into soft or hard bounces, each with specific codes that provide bounce details.

In your Mailchimp account, you'll find these codes in bounce message reports, which are essential for identifying and addressing deliverability issues.

• Bounce Code 1: Mailbox full (soft bounce)
• Bounce Code 2: Server down (soft bounce)

Act on these signals by checking your campaign's bounce reasons and confirming the validity of your email addresses. 

This way, you maintain a clean list, reducing future bounce rates.

Leveraging Mailchimp Tools to Improve Metrics

Take advantage of Mailchimp's analytics tools to track and decrease bounce rates.

By regularly reviewing your bounce details, you can identify patterns and clear up issues affecting your metrics.

• Use list segmentation to target engaged users.
• Regularly clean your list to remove a non-responsive or bounced recipient's email address.
• Employ Mailchimp's recommendations for reducing bounces, such as reconfirming subscriber emails.

Keeping your bounce rate low is a testament to the health of your email list and the effectiveness of your communication strategy.

Need help cleaning your email list? 

Shoot us a message and we'll be more than happy to scrub it and get your emails in the inboxes of those who will read it!