What is a Soft Bounce vs. a Hard Bounce? Can Scrubby Catch Soft Bounces?
Understanding the difference between soft and hard bounces is crucial for managing your email deliverability and maintaining a healthy email list. Here’s a breakdown of what each type of bounce means:
Hard Bounce:
A hard bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to a permanent issue. This type of bounce indicates that the email address is either invalid or non-existent. Hard bounces are typically caused by:
- Invalid Email Addresses: The email address does not exist, is misspelled, or is no longer in use.
- Incorrect Domain: The domain of the email address is invalid or incorrect.
Since hard bounces are permanent, the best practice is to remove these addresses from your email list to prevent future deliverability issues and protect your sender reputation.
Soft Bounce:
A soft bounce is a temporary delivery issue that prevents an email from reaching its intended recipient. Unlike hard bounces, soft bounces can occur for a variety of reasons, including:
- Server Issues: The recipient’s mail server may be down or offline.
- Mailbox Full: The recipient’s mailbox has reached its storage limit and cannot receive new messages.
- Content or Sender Reputation: The recipient’s mail server or spam filters may reject your email due to low sender score, poor domain reputation, or the content of the email.
Soft bounces are not permanent, meaning the email might still be delivered if the issue is resolved. However, if an email soft bounces multiple times, it’s a good idea to consider removing it from your list to avoid damaging your sender reputation.
Can Scrubby Catch Soft Bounces?
Scrubby is an complete email validation tool designed to incorporate risky and hard-to-verify email addresses. While Scrubby excels at identifying hard bounces—detecting with 98.7% accuracy whether an email address is invalid or does not exist—it does not specifically catch soft bounces.
This is because soft bounces are often due to temporary conditions that can vary widely and are not directly related to the validity of the email address itself. Soft bounces can occur due to factors such as server downtime, full mailboxes, or issues with the sender’s reputation or email content. These are dynamic situations that standard validation tools, including Scrubby, are not designed to predict.
However, using Scrubby to validate your email list can help reduce the likelihood of soft bounces by ensuring that your emails are being sent to valid, properly formatted addresses and by filtering out known risky addresses. This can indirectly help maintain a healthier sender reputation, reducing the chances of soft bounces due to sender score or domain reputation issues.
