What is an email bounce, and what is the difference between a hard and a soft bounce?

Related questions

• Why does my email not reach the recipient?Deliverability, spam and bounces

More in this topic

• Does open tracking hurt deliverability or send emails to spam?

  Nobody can promise either way: spam filters weigh many signals, and a tracking image and rewritten links are two of them. In HawkOpen tracking is off until your company’s owner or an administrator switches it on, only recipients whose consent is recorded get a tracked copy, and a campaign can switch open or link tracking off when you want the plainest possible email.

• How many emails can I send a day from Gmail or Outlook with HawkOpen?

  Your mail provider sets the daily limit, not HawkOpen, because HawkOpen sends through your own Gmail, Outlook or IMAP/SMTP account. HawkOpen’s own limits for campaigns are 50 recipients per campaign on Free and 500 on Pro and Business, plus 60,000 a month on Business.

• Does HawkOpen meet the Gmail and Yahoo bulk sender requirements?

  Partly. Every email ends with a “Do not send me messages” link, campaign emails also carry a one-click unsubscribe header that points to it, and they leave from your own mailbox. Domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is set up by you in your domain’s DNS; HawkOpen does not check it.

• Why do my emails go to spam?

  Common causes are a domain without SPF, DKIM or DMARC, sending to old or unknown addresses, recipients marking you as spam, and sudden large volumes. HawkOpen shows bounces and rejections, but it cannot see where an email landed in someone’s mailbox.

• What is DMARC and do I need it?

  DMARC is a DNS record of your domain that tells receiving servers what to do with mail that fails SPF and DKIM checks. If you send from your own domain, especially to many people, you should have it. You set it up in your domain’s DNS; HawkOpen does not create or check it.

• How do I check SPF, DKIM and DMARC for my domain, and does HawkOpen check them?

  HawkOpen does not check them: it does not read DNS records. You can check them yourself with a DNS lookup tool and in the headers of an email you sent to yourself.

• How do I set up DKIM for my domain on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

  DKIM is switched on in your mail provider’s admin console, which gives you a key to publish in your domain’s DNS. HawkOpen sends through your own mailbox, so it uses whatever DKIM your provider signs with and has no DKIM setting of its own.

• What does the bounce “550 5.7.515” from Microsoft mean?

  Microsoft refused the email because your sending domain did not pass the required authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC). HawkOpen records it as a hard bounce and stops sending to that address.

• Does HawkOpen monitor spam complaints and the Gmail spam rate?

  No. HawkOpen does not receive spam complaints and does not read Google Postmaster Tools. It records unsubscribes, bounces and rejections; your spam rate at Gmail is visible only in Postmaster Tools.

• What is the HawkOpen Deliverability Guardian?

  It is a Business plan check of what happened to your emails in the last 30 days: accepted, rejected, deferred and bounced. It gives a score with reasons and pauses bulk sending when bounces or rejections are too high.

• Does HawkOpen send my emails through its own servers or a dedicated IP?

  Neither. HawkOpen hands each email to the SMTP server of the mailbox you connected (Gmail, Outlook or your IMAP/SMTP provider), so it leaves from your provider. There are no HawkOpen sending IPs and no dedicated IP.

• Is there a suppression list for unsubscribed and bounced addresses?

  Yes. An address that bounced hard is blocked at once, one with repeated soft bounces is set aside, and addresses that unsubscribed or asked HawkOpen to erase their data are skipped. Campaigns never send them a copy.

• Should I track opens and clicks in cold email?

  Open counts are a weak signal in any outreach, so many senders switch open tracking off and keep link clicks and replies; HawkOpen lets you do that per campaign. HawkOpen also tracks only recipients whose consent is recorded for your company, so people who have not consented get an ordinary email. Its terms do not allow unsolicited bulk messaging.

• Why is my email not sending or stuck in the outbox?

  Usually the mail app or the mailbox is the cause: no connection, a wrong password or expired sign-in, an attachment that is too large, or a sending limit reached. For emails sent through HawkOpen, each recipient shows its state: queued, accepted, deferred or rejected.

• Can an email tracker tell me whether my email went to spam?

  No. An email filed as spam produces no bounce: to the sender it looks accepted. A tracker only sees that no open or click came, and that can also mean blocked images or simply not read yet.

• Why do my tracked emails land in the Gmail Promotions tab?

  Gmail decides the tab from the whole message: many links and images, marketing layout and sending patterns push it towards Promotions. Tracking alone does not decide it, but a tracking image and redirected links add to that picture.

• What does a “Message blocked” or rejected sending error mean?

  A mail server refused your email, either your own provider or the recipient’s. The error text and its code say why: codes starting with 5 are permanent, codes starting with 4 are temporary. HawkOpen shows the result per recipient.

• Why do my emails still go to spam although SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up?

  Authentication only proves that the email really comes from your domain. Whether it lands in the inbox depends mostly on reputation: who you write to, how they react, how much you send and what the message looks like.

• Should I turn off click tracking on plain (naked) links to protect deliverability?

  It can help: when a link shows one address but leads through another, filters may treat it with suspicion. In HawkOpen you can switch link tracking off on its own for a campaign or a message, and your company’s owner or an administrator can do it for the whole account, while open tracking stays.

• What is an acceptable email bounce rate?

  As low as possible: with a clean list of people you know, hard bounces stay well under 1%. HawkOpen’s Deliverability Guardian marks 1% hard bounces as elevated, 2% as high and pauses bulk sending at 5%.

• Which email metrics should a small business watch?

  Start with replies, link clicks by people, bounces and unsubscribes. Treat open rate as a rough hint only, because privacy features and scanners load emails without a person.

• How can I improve my email open rate?

  Write a clear, specific subject, send to people who expect you, at a sensible frequency, and from a recognisable name. Measure the effect on replies and clicks, because open rate is distorted by Apple Mail Privacy Protection and scanners.

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