How does Salesforce Marketing Cloud handle email bounces and what are the best practices for bounce management?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 9 Aug 2025
Updated 19 Aug 2025
7 min read
Email bounces are a critical factor impacting email deliverability and sender reputation. For those using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, understanding how the platform handles these bounces and implementing effective management strategies is essential to ensure your messages reach the inbox.
Ignoring bounce management can lead to higher bounce rates, poor sender reputation, and even getting your sending IP or domain placed on a blocklist (or blacklist). I've seen firsthand how a seemingly small issue with bounces can cascade into significant deliverability problems, hindering marketing efforts and impacting customer engagement.
How Salesforce marketing cloud handles bounces
Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) has an automated system designed to manage email bounces to protect your sender reputation and maintain list hygiene. This system differentiates between hard and soft bounces, treating them differently based on the nature of the delivery failure. Hard bounces are permanent failures, while soft bounces are temporary.
For hard bounces, SFMC typically marks the subscriber status as "Undeliverable." The default logic for this isn't always a one-and-done suppression for all accounts, which can sometimes be counterintuitive. For instance, an email address might move to "Held" (similar to Undeliverable) after three bounces with at least two weeks passing between the first and third bounces, depending on your account configuration. This default behavior is designed to be lenient, avoiding unnecessary suppression due to temporary server issues at the recipient's end.
However, for optimal deliverability, it's generally recommended to configure hard bounce handling to be more aggressive, often moving to a "one-and-done" approach. This prevents repeated attempts to invalid addresses, which can negatively impact your sender reputation. You usually need to work with Salesforce support to adjust this setting.
For soft bounces, SFMC retries sending the email for a certain period, as these are temporary issues. If the email continues to soft bounce after multiple attempts (the exact number and duration depend on the bounce type and system configuration), the subscriber will eventually be marked as undeliverable. This built-in automation aims to maximize delivery while minimizing manual intervention.
Understanding bounce classifications and their impact
Understanding the different types of bounces and their impact is fundamental to effective email marketing. Hard bounces are permanent delivery failures, often due to invalid or non-existent email addresses. Continuing to send to these addresses signals to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that your list quality is poor or that you may be engaging in spammy practices.
Soft bounces, on the other hand, indicate temporary delivery issues, such as a full mailbox, server downtime, or the email message being too large. While they are temporary, a high volume of persistent soft bounces can also raise red flags with ISPs, affecting your sender reputation. ISPs (like Gmail and Yahoo) monitor bounce rates closely, and consistently high rates can lead to your emails being filtered to spam, throttled, or even outright rejected.
Impact: Severe negative effect on sender reputation, increased likelihood of landing on a blacklist or blocklist.
Action: Immediately remove from your sending list to protect deliverability.
Soft bounces
Temporary delivery failures.
Causes: Full mailbox, server issues, message too large.
Impact: Lower deliverability, potential throttling, and if persistent, a decline in sender reputation.
Action: Monitor, re-engage (if appropriate), and suppress if they continue to bounce.
The overall bounce rate is a key metric. Many deliverability experts recommend keeping your hard bounce rate below 0.5% and total bounce rate (including soft bounces) below 2-5% to maintain good standing with ISPs. A bounce rate exceeding 10% can be a serious indicator of list quality issues or other problems affecting your email deliverability.
Best practices for bounce management in SFMC
Effective bounce management in Salesforce Marketing Cloud extends beyond relying solely on the platform's default settings. Proactive strategies are crucial for maintaining a healthy sender reputation and maximizing inbox placement.
List hygiene: Regularly clean your email lists to remove invalid, inactive, or unengaged subscribers. This reduces hard bounces and helps prevent hitting spam traps. Consider implementing a re-engagement strategy for inactive subscribers before removing them entirely.
Email verification: Use email verification tools to validate email addresses at the point of collection or before adding them to your main sending lists. This can significantly reduce hard bounces.
Sender authentication: Ensure your email authentication protocols, such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, are correctly configured. Strong authentication builds trust with ISPs and can improve deliverability, even for legitimate sends.
Segment audiences: Segment your audience based on engagement levels. Sending to highly engaged segments first can establish a positive sending reputation before reaching out to less active subscribers.
Leveraging SFMC's built-in features, such as automated list management, can help enforce these best practices automatically. Regularly reviewing your bounce data and making adjustments to your sending strategy is key to long-term success.
Monitoring and troubleshooting bounces
Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides tools to monitor and troubleshoot email bounces. Within Email Studio, you can view bounce reports and classifications, which help identify the reasons behind delivery failures. This data is crucial for understanding specific issues and taking targeted action.
Key Bounce Management Tip
Proactively monitor your bounce rates. If your overall bounce percentage exceeds 5%, it's a strong indicator that you need to investigate your list quality and sending practices. Address issues promptly to avoid long-term damage to your sender reputation and potential blacklisting.
When troubleshooting, pay attention to the specific SMTP bounce codes. These codes provide detailed reasons for delivery failures. For example, a 550 code often indicates a hard bounce (invalid address), while a 4xx code typically signals a temporary issue, like a full inbox or server problem. Reviewing these codes can help you distinguish between permanent and temporary issues and decide on the appropriate course of action.
Always implement a "one-and-done" strategy for hard bounces in SFMC, even if it requires a support ticket to configure.
Regularly segment your email lists by engagement to identify and manage inactive or unengaged subscribers proactively.
Use an email verification service before importing new lists to catch invalid addresses at the source.
Monitor your bounce rates diligently and set up alerts for sudden spikes or consistently high percentages to address issues quickly.
Common pitfalls
Relying solely on SFMC's default bounce handling logic, which might be too lenient for hard bounces and negatively impact sender reputation.
Ignoring soft bounces, as a high volume can also lead to deliverability issues and being flagged by ISPs.
Failing to implement email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) properly, which can exacerbate bounce issues and lead to blocklisting.
Not regularly cleaning your lists, which leads to sending to invalid addresses and hitting spam traps, damaging your reputation.
Expert tips
For accounts with substantial email volumes, consider setting up custom automation in SFMC to manage bounce data more granularly than the default system.
Leverage SFMC's tracking data and bounce classifications to gain deeper insights into specific reasons for delivery failures and tailor your strategy accordingly.
Educate your team on the difference between hard and soft bounces and the importance of prompt action to maintain email health.
Always test new email segments or sending patterns on smaller batches first to gauge bounce rates before a full deployment.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says they were confused by Salesforce's explanation that bouncing daily for two weeks still allows emailing, but three bounces within two weeks lead to an undeliverable status. They felt this logic was inconsistent with typical bounce management.
2019-01-10 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that bounce management typically involves a specific number of bounces over a defined period. They offered to provide training on how ESPs handle bounces, noting it's a complex problem often oversimplified for clients.
2019-01-10 - Email Geeks
Maintaining a healthy email ecosystem
Effective bounce management in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is not just about relying on automated systems. It requires a proactive approach involving continuous list hygiene, proper email authentication, and diligent monitoring of your email campaigns. By actively managing hard and soft bounces, you can protect your sender reputation, avoid being placed on a blacklist (or blocklist), and significantly improve your email deliverability rates.
Implementing a "one-and-done" strategy for hard bounces and closely monitoring persistent soft bounces are crucial steps. This ensures that your valuable messages reach their intended recipients, fostering stronger customer relationships and maximizing the return on your email marketing investments.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, understanding how the platform handles these bounces and implementing effective management strategies is essential to ensure your messages reach the inbox.
Gmail
and 
Yahoo) monitor bounce rates closely, and consistently high rates can lead to your emails being filtered to spam, throttled, or even outright rejected.
