Email is a powerful tool, but bounced emails can hinder your reach and affect your reputation. This is especially true when you use Microsoft 365 security services for email to improve deliverability. Email bounces are emails that cannot reach their recipient. This can affect both the sender’s credibility and deliverability. This paper explores email bounces and their causes. It also explains how to reduce bounce rates and protect your reputation.
Microsoft 365 Email Security: A Guide to Handling Bounces
When an email fails to reach its recipient’s mailbox, it is considered “bounced.” Cloud email security services often send an automatic message explaining the cause of the failure to deliver. Bounces can be classified into two main categories: hard and Soft bounces.
Hard Bounces: Managing Permanent Failures in Delivery
Microsoft 365’s email security services can prevent a hard bounce or persistent email delivery failure. This happens when the email address is incorrect, invalid, or deleted. It can also happen when security systems identify your email message as spam. If your email server has been suspected of sending fraudulent or spam material, it could be blocked from sending any messages.
Attacks like spam or email bombs can cause hard bounces. Security protocols will instinctively prevent such messages from reaching the intended recipient. More is needed to retry to fix hard bounces. You must address the root cause to prevent repeated failures.
Soft Bounces: Troubleshooting Temporary Delivery Blocks
Unlike a hard bounce, a soft bounce is the result of a temporary issue. Most commonly, these bounces are caused by an overflowing email inbox, large attachments that exceed the recipient’s server limits, or server timeouts on the recipient’s end. Most ESPs and cloud email services will automatically retry to send the email because these issues are temporary.
If delivery is not successful after several attempts, the email will be classified as a “hard bounce,” and no further attempts will be made.
What Bounce Rate Should You Aim For?
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of email messages that never reach their recipients. It should ideally be less than 2% to keep a good sender reputation. Otherwise, if the bounce rate is high, email providers may treat your emails as spam and reduce their deliverability; cloud email security services can mitigate this effect.
Bounce rate expectations change dramatically across industries. For example, most e-commerce companies will keep their bounce rate between 0.19% and 0.26%. Keeping your contact list fresh and validated regularly will ensure that bounce rates remain within industry norms, preventing a buildup of invalid addresses and improving overall deliverability.
Causes of Email Bounces and How to Avoid Them
Soft Bounce Causes: What You Can Control
Soft bounces can be corrected. Here are a few typical causes.
- Full Inbox: This will temporarily stop sending new emails until the recipient’s mailbox is cleared.
- Email servers can block attachments or certain types of content. You can avoid this by reducing the attachment size or simplifying your content.
- Soft bounces can be caused by a bad recipient address. This could be a misspelling or an outdated list.
- Issues with DNS or domain names: Delivery may be temporarily disrupted if a domain name is unavailable or the server fails.
- Keep your email list clean to improve email success, and check the content regularly for any possible barriers.
Hard Bounce Causes: Permanent Obstacles Explained
More permanent problems usually cause hard bounces. Here are some examples.
- Hard Bounce: This occurs when an email address is faked or deleted.
- Blocked emails due to security measures: Cybersecurity protocols like DKIM, DKIM, and DMARC check the legitimacy of emails and block any that are deemed suspicious. Your emails may bounce if a server’s anti-spam filter flags them.
- Email providers can block your emails if your domain is known to be prone to spam and security threats. This will result in hard bounces.
It is important to verify your email list regularly, implement Domain Authentication Protocols, and ensure your server has a good reputation.
Proven Practices for Protecting Sender Reputation
- Check your contact list regularly: delete invalid or inactive addresses from your email list to reduce bounce risk.
- The double opt-in policy ensures that email addresses are valid and that the recipients agree to receive emails.
- Monitor Email Metrics: Track delivery metrics to identify any potential problems early.
- Gradually Increase Email volume: This will also help new accounts increase their email volume so they don’t get flagged as spammers.
How Domain Authentication Enhances Email Delivery
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are domain authentication protocols that improve deliverability. They verify your sender’s identity and email integrity. These protocols verify that emails are coming from your domain and haven’t been tampered with en route.
SPF makes sure that only IP addresses authorized by your domain can send email. DKIM relies on digital signatures to verify that email content is not altered. DMARC combines SPF and DKIM to add further protection through cross-verification of the sender’s identity. These protocols can reduce the likelihood of your email being marked as spam and increase trust with recipients.
Final Thoughts on Optimizing Email Deliverability
Email bounces can seriously affect your company’s ability to communicate. You can still save your reputation and email deliverability by controlling and understanding them and setting up domain authentication, and setting up your email list. Advanced Email Threat Protection Options This will help you to ensure that your emails are delivered. You can improve the deliverability and security of your emails by following these best practices.
With over a decade in the tech field, Bogdan blends technical expertise with insights on business innovation in technology.
A regular contributor to TMS Outsource's blog, where you'll find sharp analyses on software development, tech business strategies, and global tech dynamics.
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