A bounce refers to an email whose delivery was rejected by your recipient's email server. There are several reasons a message might be rejected, which we call 'hard bounces' and 'soft bounces.' You'll see bounced messages indicated in your reports and live feed with a red arrow.
What is a hard bounce?
A hard bounce indicates a permanent reason your email cannot be delivered, and future attempts to email this address will result in additional bounces. Sending to a non-existent email address is the most common cause for hard bounces.
What is a soft bounce?
A soft bounce indicates a valid email address reaching the recipient's server before being returned as undelivered. In many instances, a soft bounce will be retried after a period of time. If you receive a bounce notification, it will likely indicate whether delivery will be reattempted. Soft bounces can occur for many reasons, some of which include:
Your recipient's mailbox is full.
The mail server is down.
The mail server is processing a high volume of messages.
The message is too large.
How are bounces handled for Sequences?
For all hard bounces, Mixmax will automatically exit the email address from the sequence, so you don't have to worry about future attempted deliveries. The Insights tab in the sequence shows the percentage and total number of emails that bounced in your current sequence, as well as the percentage and total number of emails that bounced for each sequence stage under Email Performance.
For soft bounces, Mixmax will continue delivering future stages, and recipients will not be exited from the sequence.
Only the primary recipient's address determines whether someone exits a sequence. If the primary recipient is exited, any CC'd contacts on that thread will also stop receiving the sequence, since later stages are sent to the primary recipient.
If a CC'd or BCC'd address bounces, the primary recipient stays active and continues through the remaining stages — and the bounce is not counted in your sequence Insights or Bounce %.
Only hard bounces for the primary recipient will appear in your Live Feed and reports.