Email Bounces Explained: Best Practices with Microsoft 365 Email Security

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 will explain email bounces and their causes. It will also discuss reducing bounce rates and protecting your reputation as a sender.

The Complete Guide to Email Bounces: Hard, Soft, and Solutions

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 hard and soft bounces.

Hard Bounces: Permanent Issues in Email Delivery

Microsoft 365 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 occur 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 avoid repeated failures.

Soft Bounces: Addressing Temporary Delivery Issues

Unlike a hard bounce, a soft bounce results from a temporary caused byommonly, these bounces are caused by an overflowing email inbox, large attachments that exceed the recipient’s server limits, or server timeouts on the recipient end. Most ESPs arecipient’semail services will automatically retry to send the email because these issues are temporary.

After several attempts, the email will be classified as a “hard bounce,” and no further attempts will be made.

Setting an Acceptable Email Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of an email is the percentage of messages that fail to be delivered. Your bounce rate should be below 2% not negatively to impact your sender’s name. High bounce rates may cause email providers to flag your messages as spam and reduce deliverability. Cloud email security services can address this concern.

Expectations of bounce rates vary significantly by industry. For example, most e-commerce companies maintain a bounce rate between 0.19% and 0.26%. Updating and validating your contact list regularly is important to keep bounce rates within industry standards. This will prevent the accumulation of invalid addresses and improve overall deliverability.

Common Email Bounce Causes and Prevention Tips

Why Soft Bounces Happen and What to Do

Soft bounces can be corrected. Here are some common 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.
• An insufficient recipient address can cause soft bounces. 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.

Causes of Hard Bounces and Solutions

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 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 essential to verify your email list regularly, implement Domain Authentication Protocols, and ensure your server has a good reputation.

Best Practices for a Healthy Email Sender Reputation

1. Check your contact list regularly: delete invalid or inactive addresses from your email list to reduce bounce risk.
2. The double opt-in policy ensures that email addresses are valid and that the recipients agree to receive emails.
3. Monitor Email Metrics: Track delivery metrics to identify any potential problems early.
4. Gradually Increase Email volume: This will also help new accounts increase their email volume so they don’t get flagged as spammers.

Domain Authentication: Securing Better Deliverability

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are domain authentication protocols that improve deliverability. They verify the sender’s identity and email integrity, ensuring that emails are coming from your domain and haven’t been tampered with en route.

SPF ensures 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.

Managing Bounces for Better Results

Email bounces can seriously affect your company’s abcommunication ability. However, you can still protectour reputation and email deliverability by controlling and understanding them a,etting up domain authentication a,nd setting up your email list. Advanced Email Threat Protection will help you ensure your emails are delivered. YoBy following these best practices, youan improve the deliverability and security of your emails by following these best practices.

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