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, turning the email orange. Action Plan and Batch Email bounces are always detected and displayed in Follow Up Boss.
Note: Hover over an email address on the lead profile to gain insight into the error.
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:
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Your Custom Email Domain is not authenticated
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Your Email address is not Connected to Follow Up Boss
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An Email server was down (yours or your recipient's)
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DMARC or other Email settings don't allow for Emailing from a third party like FUB
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The message sent contains media that is too large to display properly
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The recipient's inbox was full
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The recipient's settings do not allow for an email from the sender
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The message's text formatting is hard to read or unreadable when received
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An email signature has too large of photos or other formatting issues
A hard bounce occurs when your email is permanently rejected because the email address does not exist or is invalid.
NOTE: FUB will display the same BOUNCED indicator for both hard and soft bounces.
Many email providers won't give a reason for the bounce. We recommend the following if you notice that an email bounces:
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Verify that the email address is correct
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If you have a custom domain, get the email authenticated.
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Use the Remove Format tool on the text of your Email found in this guide.
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Resize pictures to recommended sizes.
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Consider using HTML Email instead.
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Review your signature to make sure it matches best practices.
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Resend the email with the above changes
Note: There are some scenarios where a bounce may not be detected with individual Emails. For example, if an Email is sent from a Google-based Connected Email 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 Email address is sent to an email address 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 address's inbox after sending an outbound email. This would not appear in FUB. This typically occurs when your Email Domain Authentication has not been completed. These messages are sent by the recipient's email provider to explain why they rejected or blocked a message.
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).
Rejection Message: Message Rejected
See Google's Fix Bounced or Rejected Emails article for more information.
This rejection commonly occurs when emailing bulk Leads from your Gmail Email address (@gmail email address). Google is blocking the email because they detected it as having "spammy" content. Google has strict guidelines for sending bulk Emails from a Gmail account. Gmail addresses were not intended to be used for bulk emailing
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