Introduction

In TruMESSAGING, to protect your reputation, you need to remove hard-bouncing email addresses on time. In this article we will have a look at the following points:

• What Is a Hard Bounce
• Why Hard-Bouncing Contacts Should Be Removed
• How to Delete Hard-Bouncing Contacts
• How to Avoid Bounces

What Is a Hard Bounce

You may see that emails sent from your account cannot be delivered to recipients. This is known as a bounce. There are hard and soft bounces.

A hard bounce occurs when the email cannot be delivered because of persistent issues, e. g. nonexistent email address. 

Why Hard-Bouncing Contacts Should Be Removed

Email providers view a high rate of hard bounces as a sign that a sender isn't properly managing their recipient list and might be sending an unsolicited email. As a result, sending from your account may be paused. To learn more about it, please see the article Why Has Sending From My Account Been Paused. 

So, it's vital to monitor the number of hard bounces and delete hard-bouncing email addresses from your recipient lists.

How to Delete Hard-Bouncing Contacts

You can see the status of a contact in the Contacts section - it is displayed under the email address. The hard-bouncing addresses are in pale type.

Figure 1. Hard-bouncing Addresses in the Contact List

To delete a hard-bouncing contact, click the button with three dots which is on the right side of the page and select “Delete”.

Figure 2. Deleting a Hard-bouncing Contact

You can also delete a contact by clicking on it and choosing the Delete option in the upper right corner.

Figure 3. Deleting a Hard-bouncing Contact

Now let’s see how to remove several hard-bouncing contacts at a time.

Go to the Contacts section and click the filter icon in the upper-right side of the page.

Figure 4. Filter Icon in the Contacts Section

You will see a pop-up with filters.

Figure 5. Pop-up With Filters 

Now let’s set up the filters. In the first field, choose “Contact Field”, in the “Select Operand” field choose “General Fields -> Email Status”, and in the last field choose “Hard Bounced”. Then click “Apply”.

Figure 6. Setting Up Filters

After that, all the hard-bouncing contacts of your account will be displayed. 

Figure 7. Hard-bouncing Contacts Shown After Filtering

On this page, you can delete them all. Check the box in the left side of the page and click the button with three dots in the right corner, then choose “Delete Selected”.

Figure 8. Deleting All the Hard-bouncing Contacts

There is one more way to delete several hard-bouncing contacts at a time. Go to the dashboard page and find the Email Campaigns Overview bar chart on the Statistics tab.

Figure 9. Email Campaigns Overview Bar Chart on the Dashboard

Choose the time period in the upper right corner, then click the “Hard Bounced” button in the Email Campaigns Overview bar chart.

Figure 10. Hard-bouncing Contacts Filtering

You will see all the hard-bouncing contacts for the chosen period. You can delete them all at once by checking the box, as shown above.

Figure 11. Hard-bouncing Contacts Shown After Filtering

How to Avoid Bounces

These tips will help you avoid bounces and improve reputation.

• Don’t rent or buy recipient lists. They may contain invalid addresses which may increase hard bounce rates.
• Keep your contact list up to date. If you haven't messaged your contacts in a long time, try to validate their statuses by other means e. g. website login activity or purchase history.
• If you don't know how to verify your recipients' statuses, use our Welcome Blast template. It invites your contacts to confirm that they want to receive your mail. As a result, you can remove from the mailing list those recipients who didn’t answer.

Conclusion

Hard-bouncing contacts harm the reputation of your account, and it is crucial to remove them from mailing lists on time. Now you know how to do this and can prevent bounces.