Why do my emails bounce?
We’ve all been there. You need to send an urgent message via email then, when you check your email reports you see that it “bounced.”
If that’s the case, it means that your email never actually got to the intended recipient.
Most email bounces are just bad timing. Wait awhile and try again. If persistent though, one of the reasons below should explain the problem. In 99% of cases an email bounce has absolutely nothing to do with your email server or client.
Here are seven reasons your emails may be bouncing and what to do about it:
1. A non-existent email address
If the bounce is marked as “non-existent email address,” the email address could have a typo or the person with the address may have left the organization.
There’s also a chance that the contact gave a false email address, which can be the case if you’re gathering email addresses from your website form.
In this case, it’s important to review these bounced contacts and see if there are any obvious typos in the email address. If not, try to reach the contacts by other means to confirm their email address.
2. Undeliverable email
If bounced emails are in the “Undeliverable” category, that means that the receiving email server is temporarily unavailable, was overloaded, or couldn’t be found.
A server that can’t be found could have crashed or be under maintenance, so this may just mean waiting to send your email to the address again. However, if this email address repeatedly bounces on multiple emails, it may mean their server or company has gone for good.
3. Mailbox Full
If your contact has so many emails in their inbox that they can’t receive any more, your emails will bounce back until there is space for them.
Sometimes, this can mean that the contact is no longer using that email address.
As with a non-existent email address, you may want to follow up with the contact by phone or mail to check whether their address is correct.
4. Vacation/Auto Reply
If someone goes on vacation or can’t check their email, your emails to them may get an “out of office” reply..
It’s important to note that, unlike with other bounce categories, this type of bounce means your email was successfully sent to the inbox.
Carefully monitor how often this email address ends up in this category. If months go by and the person hasn’t returned from vacation, you may want to check with the contact another way to verify the email address is current.
5. Blocked email
If the email addresses are placed within the “Blocked” category, the receiving server has blocked the incoming email.
This is often the case among government institutions or schools, where servers can be stricter when it comes to receiving emails.
To resolve this issue, you need to get in touch with the contact and request that their server administrator unblock your IP address – they can find the IP address from your domain name (for example, this sites domain name is gyroscopic-solutions.co.uk ).
6. Other
Bounces that don’t give the server a reason for bouncing are put in this category, so it can mean that the email bounced for one of the reasons above or something else.
It’s important to keep an eye on these contacts, too, to see if the bounces keep recurring.
7. Blacklisting
This is where your server IP address has been placed on a Black List of suspected email spammers or other malicious deliverers such as viruses etc.
If you think you have been black listed you can check here. Enter your domain name or IP address and choose blacklist from the orange button.
Dedicated & Shared IP addresses?
If you have not yet purchased a dedicated IP address for your domain from us, this would be a good time to do so.
Shared IP addresses mean that other domains as well as yours have the same IP address and if just one of the other domains is naughty and gets black listed, so will you. To prevent this you must have a DEDICATED IP address for your domain
