When emailing your database, there may be some emails that bounce or have a rejection. Understanding and resolving these issues are crucial for successful email delivery. Check out the resources below to improve your email delivery rates!
How it Works
Email Bounces
An email bounce signifies the non-delivery of your email message and can happen for a number of different reasons. When a drip campaign email or an email sent to a Google email bounces, we will mark that contact with the tag bounced and you will see that the email bounced on the timeline history:
A soft bounce is when your recipient's email address is valid but the message never reached the recipient's mail server because of a reason such as:
- The server was down
- The message was too large for the recipient’s inbox
- The recipient's inbox was full
- The recipient's settings do not allow for an email from the sender
A hard bounce occurs when your email is permanently rejected because the email address does not exist or is invalid.
Many email providers won't give a reason for the bounce. We recommend the following if you notice that an email bounces:
- Verify that the email address is correct
- Re-send the email
Note: Action Plan and Batch Email bounces are always detected and displayed in Follow Up Boss. For 1:1 emails we detect bounce notifications generated by Google and Microsoft 365 mail servers (your connected email provider). However, it's not always easy to tell which server is going to send the bounce email notification.
For example, if the customer has a connected Google address and sends an email to a non-existing domain, Google will generate a bounce notification and we'll show it in FUB. If the same customer sends an email to a non-existing @yahoo.com address, Yahoo can send a bounce notification and we won't be able to detect it, and won't show in FUB.
Email Blocked or Rejected
Occasionally, you may receive a "message rejected" or "message blocked" email in your email provider's inbox after sending an outbound email. These messages are sent by the recipient's email provider to explain why they rejected or blocked a message (this typically happens when sending bulk/batch emails to a large group of people). Each rejection or block message is different and it is best to troubleshoot those emails on an individual basis (i.e. there are different reasons why an email is rejected/blocked and thus the resolution steps are different).
Rejection Message: Message Rejected
See Google's Fix Bounced or Rejected Emails article for more information.
This rejection commonly occurs when batch emailing leads using a connected @gmail email address (Google is blocking the email because they detected it as having "spammy" content). Gmail addresses were not intended to be used for bulk emailing and as such Google has strict spam guidelines.
Troubleshooting
- Send Batch Emails via Follow Up Boss
- Alter the content of your email using common best practice methods to avoid being flagged as spam
- Follow Google's Gmail rejection troubleshooting steps
Rejection Message: Connection Refused Reason 554
This rejection occurs when the recipient's email provider thinks your email is spam (either because your email address/IP ended up on a spam list or the content of the email was considered spammy).
Troubleshooting
- Request delisting from the spam list stated in the rejection message (if applicable)
- Send Batch Emails via Follow Up Boss
- Alter the content of your email using common best practice methods to avoid being flagged as spam