What is the difference between hard bounces, soft bounces, blocked bounces, and technical bounces?
Suggested answer
Hard bounce (permanent): The receiving server permanently rejects the email — the address does not exist or the domain is invalid. Marketing Cloud automatically sets the subscriber status to Undeliverable after 1 hard bounce. Threshold: keep hard bounce rate below 0.5%.
Soft bounce (temporary): A temporary delivery failure — mailbox full, server temporarily unavailable, message too large. Marketing Cloud retries soft bounces up to 4 times over 72 hours before marking as undeliverable. Threshold: keep below 4%.
Blocked bounce: The receiving server or ISP actively blocked delivery, often due to IP/domain blacklisting or content filtering. Indicates a reputation problem.
Technical bounce: Miscellaneous technical errors (DNS failures, connection timeouts). Should be monitored but don't necessarily indicate a list quality issue.
Practice content for interview preparation; not an official vendor answer. Verify details against current product documentation.
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