Understanding Bounces and Unsubscribes

Learn the difference between bounced emails and unsubscribes, and how each impacts your email deliverability.

Understanding how your emails perform after sending is key to maintaining strong deliverability.Two important metrics to monitor are bounces and unsubscribes.

What is a Bounced Email?

A bounced email occurs when a message cannot be delivered to the recipient’s inbox.

Hard Bounce (Permanent Failure)

A hard bounce means the email cannot be delivered permanently.Common reasons:

• Invalid or non-existent email address

• Domain does not exist

• Recipient server has blocked the email

👉 What to do:Remove these contacts immediately to protect your sender reputation.

Soft Bounce (Temporary Issue)

A soft bounce is a temporary delivery issue.Common reasons:

• Recipient’s inbox is full

• Email server is temporarily down

• Message is too large

Rechat will retry sending these emails for a period of time (typically up to 72 hours).If delivery continues to fail, the email may eventually be treated as a hard bounce.

In Rechat

• Multiple soft bounces may appear with a red badge (e.g. “Bounced7”)

• This indicates multiple delivery attempts

What is an Unsubscribe?

An unsubscribe occurs when a recipient chooses to stop receiving your emails.This means:

• Your email was successfully delivered

• The recipient opted out of future communication

Why This Matters

• Bounces = delivery problem

• Unsubscribes = engagement choice

Both impact your sender reputation in different ways.

Best Practices

• Remove hard bounces immediately

• Monitor repeated soft bounces

• Respect all unsubscribe requests

• Regularly clean your contact list

A healthy email list is not about size—it’s about engagement.Smaller, high-quality lists will always outperform large, unengaged ones.