Understanding and managing email bounce on systeme.io

In this article, we’ll explain a very important term for email deliverability that often causes confusion among some senders: email bounces, as well as the difference between the two types of bounces : hard and soft.

What is an email bounce?

An email bounce occurs when an email is not delivered to an email address. In such cases, the sender can often view which contacts didn’t receive the message, either in the email statistics or in each contact’s email history. This failure comes from the recipient’s mail server for various reasons.

A high bounce rate is a threat to your email deliverability. Indeed, if a sender has a high bounce rate, it indicates a problem with their contact list, most likely that the list is outdated.

If you frequently send messages to invalid accounts that bounce, ISPs like Gmail will consider you a “risky” sender and will start placing your emails in the spam folder or reject them altogether.

Categories of Bounces: Hard vs. Soft

On Systeme.io, you may encounter two types of email bounces: soft bounces and hard bounces.

• Soft bounces should be seen as temporary blocks. You do not need to permanently remove these email addresses from your contact list.
• Hard bounces, however, refer to invalid or non-existent addresses that should be immediately removed from your list.

Soft Bounce:

A soft bounce means the recipient's email address is valid, and the message reached the recipient's mail server, but it was rejected before being delivered to the inbox.

Systeme.io does not mark the contact as “bounced” in your contact list, since the rejection only applied to that specific message.

Common reasons for a soft bounce include:

• Recipient’s server is temporarily unavailable
• SMTP server not responding
• Blocked IP address
• Blocked domain (blacklisted)
• Suspicious or spam-like content or links

Hard Bounce:

A hard bounce means the email was permanently rejected for one of the following reasons:

• The email address is invalid
• The email address does not exist
• The recipient’s inbox is full

Systeme.io handles hard bounces in two ways:

1. Bounced status in the contact list: If the recipient’s inbox is full, the email address is marked as “bounced” in your list. Any future emails to this contact won’t even be attempted, we know the message won’t be delivered, so we prevent it from being sent. Continuing to send to bad addresses harms your deliverability.

Note: As a systeme.io support member, we can manually reactivate a bounced contact, but only if you're sure the email address is now valid or available.

2. Fake or non-existent addresses: These addresses are automatically removed from your contact list once identified as fake or deactivated.

How to Improve Your Email Bounce Rate

Reducing your email bounce rate is essential to ensure your messages reach your audience and generate positive engagement. Here are some tips:

1. Regularly clean your email lists: Remove invalid, inactive, or unengaged addresses to maintain list quality and reduce bounces.
2. Use double opt-in forms: Ask subscribers to confirm their subscription through a link sent by email. This ensures only real, interested people join your list and reduces the chances of bounces.
3. Add reCAPTCHA to your forms: This prevents bots from subscribing and adding bad contacts to your list, especially useful even if you already use double opt-in.
4. Personalize your emails: Use subscriber data (interests, past behavior, purchase history) to create tailored content. Personalized emails tend to get more opens and clicks, which improves engagement and reduces bounces.
5. Send emails consistently: If you haven’t contacted your list in a while, some addresses may no longer exist, resulting in hard bounces. Also, if you rarely email your list (or haven’t cleaned it recently), your contacts may forget you and mark your emails as spam.
6. Segment your list: Divide your list based on criteria like location, preferences, or behavior. Sending more relevant content to each segment can reduce bounces.
7. Use email verification tools: Before sending, check your list with verification tools to detect and remove invalid or inactive emails.
8. Avoid spam-like words and practices: Don’t use excessive capitalization, exaggerated claims, or overly frequent sending, these can trigger spam filters.
9. Encourage engagement and replies: Include clear, relevant calls to action in your emails to invite clicks, replies, and interaction. Engaged subscribers help boost your sender reputation and reduce bounce rates.

By following these tips and monitoring your email performance metrics closely, you should be able to significantly lower your bounce rate and optimize your overall email effectiveness.

Updated on: 14/07/2025