Should I unsubscribe soft bounces?

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone,

I just have a quick question about soft bounces. In our Marketo instance we have a large collection of users who seem to regularly soft bounce... the numbers are relatively consistent between emails in the same list so I think these may be roughly the same people.

Should I be setting these soft bounces to unsubscribe? I don't want to hurt my deliverability because I keep sending to bouncing emails.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[John_Clark1 · Accepted solution]

Hi Cheyne,

I wouldn't recommend setting a record to Unsubscribed after the first soft bounce, but after 3 or 4 sends that all bounce, then you should definitely consider it.

You can use the Min. Number Of Times constraint in any Smart List filter to gather those leads that have multiple bounces, and I would recommend using the Date Of Activity constraint as well.  You can look for leads that have had 3-4 bounces in say, the past month, or longer depending on your sending schedule, but that will give you an idea of how many there are and allow you to mark them all Unsubscribed at once if you choose using a single flow action.

John

[Anonymous]

Great, thanks John.

[Justin_Cooperm2]

+1, it's a good idea to mark unsubscribe after 4-5 soft bounces.

A lot of times the email address my have a typo in the domain (causing soft bounces) and there are many spam traps that will consider that negative (because the sender likely didn't follow the "double opt-in" best practice). Plus, it will make your deliverability look worse than it actually is if you keep including these people in your sends.