When it comes to your email marketing campaign, the first step in engaging your subscribers is making sure they see your email in the first place.
If your gmail email bounces, it’s important to find out what caused it and make changes to prevent it from happening again.
An email list full of interested and consenting subscribers should be at the center of your digital marketing strategy.
if your gmail email bounces or is filtered to the spam folder by the recipient’s internet service provider (isp) because it has a high bounce rate, you’ve pretty much lost all hope of connecting with your subscriber, let alone interact with it.
a high bounce rate can negatively affect your sender reputation and directly impact your ability to reach your inbox.
Let’s take a closer look at why this is happening, the metrics and tools you’ll need to narrow down the source of the problem, and what you can do to help prevent future bounces.
troubleshooting guide for gmail emails bouncing back to senders
Our guide will teach you how to fix email bounce issues by explaining the following:
- the reasons your gmail email keeps bouncing
- the impact on your sender reputation and deliverability rate
- the metrics you’ll need to combat this problem
- and what you can do to protect your email marketing campaign.
what does a bounced email mean?
Before figuring out why your email bounced, you first need to understand that there are different types of “bounces.” Although there are several types of bounces (transient, fraudulent, blocking, etc.), this guide will focus on two of the most common types: a hard bounce and a soft bounce.
When your gmail email bounces, that means there was either a temporary reason (soft bounce) or a permanent reason (hard bounce) that it couldn’t be delivered.
In gmail, when a sent message bounces, you will receive an automated message from [email protected] notifying you of the reason for the bounce (via an smtp code).
for example, code 550 indicates a hard bounce/permanent failure to deliver your message. the following are the main reasons why emails get bounced.
3 common reasons for a hard bounce
- you have sent an email to an invalid email address
- the domain name does not exist
- the recipient is unknown
3 common reasons for soft bounce
- the recipient’s server is busy, offline, or down
- your email is too large
- the recipient’s inbox is full
why email bounce is important to your marketing strategy
There’s no other way to cut it: Establishing a connection and building lasting relationships with your subscribers is at the heart of your marketing campaign.
a bounced email means a missed opportunity to connect. repeated bounced emails could indicate something even worse.
gmail email recovery and sender reputation
what is my sender reputation?
Your email delivery practices are under constant and ongoing scrutiny by isps and mbps alike.
Think of it this way: gmail, for example, wants to protect its email owners from spam and other malicious incoming mail.
You may be thinking: I’m not spamming, I just want my subscribers to receive my campaign.
That’s where sender reputation comes into play.
If your emails are being bounced back or some of your recipients no longer want to receive your marketing communications, in the eyes of gmail, your emails are not trustworthy and your reputation as a sender will suffer.
These are some of the most common indicators that influence the quantification of your reputation as a sender:
- bounce rate
- user complaints/spam
- ip reputation and domain reputation
- spam trap hits
- block lists
- the quality of your content
- urls/links contained in the body of your email
- unique algorithms and data points determined by each isp
emails that are retrieved in gmail and deliverability
how does email bounce affect my inbox location?
a high bounce rate is a red flag to an isp that your email delivery practices are less than ideal
Let’s take the case of a hard bounce.
Usually a hard bounce occurs because the email address itself is invalid or a spam trap. this type of email address should not be on your mailing list in the first place and can be easily avoided by investing in email verification.
Since your bounce rate is a key indicator of whether you’re a trustworthy sender, a high bounce rate can mean the difference between landing in your spam folder or your inbox.
the essential toolset to improve gmail deliverability
You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.
To better understand why your gmail emails are bouncing and how to ultimately improve your deliverability, it’s important to have the relevant data points at your fingertips. this can help you see many of the factors that could be contributing to your issues with both delivery and deliverability, and take action.
The following list outlines some key strategies for evaluating and improving your email deliverability:
- determine your bounce rate
- mitigate spam complaints
- understand your sender reputation
- monitor your block list
- Know your deliverability rate
- Assess the hygiene of your mailing lists
- Check the quality of your email content before sending
- invest in a top-tier email verification service to keep invalid and unverified emails out of your database.
how to get started: a step by step guide to troubleshoot gmail email bounce issues
step 1: generate a report of all bounced emails in gmail
To protect your email sender reputation, you will need to identify and remove all emails from your mailing lists that have resulted in a hard bounce.
If you don’t and then forward your next campaign to the same addresses, you risk further damaging your sender reputation. Not to mention that in extreme cases, google can even disable your gmail account.
One way to eliminate those problematic email addresses in gmail is to generate a report of your bounced emails.
where to go for more information showing which gmail addresses bounced will vary depending on the email sending platform you use.
here is an example.
salesforce publishes this handy guide that explains how to identify bounce addresses and suppress them to improve deliverability when sending through your marketing cloud platform.
You could easily segment your data to apply this only to gmail addresses, if that’s where you’re having the most trouble.
step 2: track your ip and domain reputation in google postmaster tools
When your emails bounce, your IP address reputation and domain reputation take on a lot of responsibility as they are two important factors used to determine your sender reputation score.
by registering with google postmaster tools, you will get clear information about the reputation of your sending domain (spf dkim):
By tracking your domain’s reputation in this way, you’ll be able to see if it’s more or less likely to be flagged by gmail’s spam filters. Of course, the higher your domain reputation, the less likely this is to happen.
Similarly, you can keep track of your ip reputation:
When it comes to deliverability, the higher your IP reputation, the more likely emails sent from your sending IP will reach your recipients’ inboxes.
It’s important to note that if you haven’t checked in with your subscribers in a long time, especially if you have older mailing lists, and then send them your email campaign anyway, you risk receiving a complaint username/spam.
These complaints will spoil your ip reputation, which can greatly influence your sender reputation, making you more likely to end up in spam or get blocked.
Remember, consent is essential when it comes to email marketing.
Step 3: Commit to continuous monitoring of the block list
another effective way to monitor your gmail sending domains and ip addresses (and improve your deliverability and deliverability rates) is through continuous blocklist monitoring.
at kickbox, blocklist monitoring is one of the tools in our deliverability suite that will alert you in real time via email, slack, or sms if you’ve been added to a blocklist.
Our team will then provide you with helpful resources outlining the impact of the blacklist along with the practical steps needed to remove it.
Step 4: Commit to a two-step email verification process
To help you avoid email bounces, it’s important to not only keep your existing mailing lists free of invalid emails, but also to maintain lists of subscribers who have consented to receive your emails.
It is good practice to commit to a two-step approach to email verification.
The first step is to verify the emails on your current mailing lists. this allows you to remove abandoned, invalid or bot generated emails.
The second step is to verify the emails at the point of capture. Kickbox’s Email Verification API can help you catch invalid emails before they reach your database. doing this will protect your sender reputation, not to mention your deliverability rate, by helping you avoid an email bounce.
ready to put the rebounds behind you and land in the inbox with kickbox?
a high bounce rate and a damaged sender reputation can have a negative and lasting impact on your marketing campaigns.
In addition to creating stellar marketing content, it’s equally important to continually monitor the factors and indicators we’ve discussed in this guide so you can get a positive ROI and protect your bottom line.
To get started today, sign up for kickbox.
Our two-step approach to email verification and deliverability toolset will help you track key indicators that may affect your sender reputation, so you can do whatever it takes to get to the inbox input.