What happens to messages that encounter a Hard Bounce?

When a message encounters a hard bounce, it indicates that the email could not be delivered due to a permanent reason. This could be due to a variety of issues, such as a nonexistent email address or the recipient's email server blocking the message. Unlike a soft bounce, which may be temporary and could allow for a future retry, a hard bounce signifies that the email delivery is permanently unsuccessful.

This understanding is crucial for managing email deliverability and maintaining a clean mailing list. Recognizing hard bounces helps organizations identify invalid or inactive email addresses, allowing them to take appropriate action, such as removing these addresses from their lists to enhance future email campaigns and improve overall send rates.

In contrast to other options, messages encountering a hard bounce do not get retried after some time, are not merely flagged for review, and certainly are not simply deleted without any analysis. Instead, they are labeled as undeliverable, indicating that no further delivery attempts will be made for those particular addresses.