Bounces - Soft vs Hard

Managing bounced emails is critical to maintaining a healthy email deliverability rate and protecting your domain reputation. In this article, we'll break down the difference between soft and hard bounces, common causes, and how to track and manage them effectively in Bullhorn Automation.

Hard Bounces

A hard bounce indicates a permanent reason an email cannot be delivered. These emails will not be retried, and you should remove the associated email addresses from your ATS database to maintain data integrity.

Common Reasons for Hard Bounces

  • The recipient's email address does not exist.
  • The domain name does not exist.
  • The recipient's email server has completely blocked delivery.

What to Do

Bullhorn provides tools to automatically flag hard-bounced emails, making it easier to clean up your database and avoid future deliverability issues.

Soft Bounce 

A soft bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to a temporary issue. Most email providers will attempt to deliver the email multiple times before treating it as a failure. In Bullhorn Automation, an email that soft-bounces three times will be treated as a hard bounce.

Common Reasons for Soft Bounces

  • The recipient's mailbox is full (over quota).
  • The recipient's email server is down or offline.
  • The email message is too large.

Ideally your bounce rate will be under 2.5%. If it goes higher than that, you may start to have issues with delivery. 

Tracking and Managing Bounces

Bullhorn allows you to search for and track bounce activity, helping you stay on top of email deliverability.

How to Search for Bounce Activity

To search for the bounce activity follow these instructions:

  1. Navigate to the Contacts list.
  2. Click Advanced Search.
  3. Choose the record type.

Additional Notes on Email Bounces

Email Deliverability Checks

Bullhorn runs an email deliverability check before sending to a new email address. If the email fails this check, it will not be sent. This proactive measure protects your domain reputation by preventing unnecessary bounces.

Unsubscribed by Bounce of Contact With Same Email

If a candidate or contact is marked as "Unsubscribed by Bounce of Contact With Same Email," it means another record with the same email address opted out. When this occurs, all records with that email address will also be marked as opted out. If you cannot find another record with the same email, it may have been deleted or edited.

Email Deliverability Best Practices

To ensure a high deliverability rate and minimize bounces, follow these best practices:

  • Monitor Bounce Rates: Keep your bounce rate below 2.5% to avoid deliverability issues.
  • Clean Your Database Regularly: Remove hard-bounced email addresses to improve your sender reputation.
  • Set Up Automations Carefully: Include a wait step (recommended two weeks) when automating processes based on bounces to prevent false positives.

Updating Contact Information

Soft Bounce

If a contact’s email address is corrected after a soft bounce, Bullhorn will continue attempting to deliver the communication.

Hard Bounce

If a contact’s email address is corrected after a hard bounce, Bullhorn will only attempt to deliver new emails. If the contact has already completed an automation, they will need to be sent through the automation again to ensure they receive the email.