Query on bounce back

Question

Hi,
I a multi wave campaign, I see that the contacts having an invalid email address, ie. either a soft or hard bounce, get the wave 1 email, but get stuck up in later waves.
I expected the hard bounce contacts to be held in the fist email step itself, but I believe they don't get held since there is some delay in getting the bounce back status from the receiving ISP.
Is that the case?
Secondly, do the soft bounce contacts get held in the email step?
Aditya

Answer 1

Hi Aditya,
Soft bounces do not prevent email sends. What you are most likely seeing is that an email send action was successfully attempted to the contact on the first wave because they did not have a hard bounceback status at the time they entered. This would allow them to leave the email send step and continue on to the rest of the campaign.
However, despite the send action being successfully attempted, the receiving mailserver rejected the message due to some reason (filter, invalid, blocked, etc). Only now would the contact have a hard bounce status, and further email sends on the campaign canvas will be prevented or blocked - meaning that the send action is not even attempted. For these contacts, you have the option to route them to another step on the campaign canvas, such as an "Add to shared list" or even a wait step, which will put them in an error group for later review.
Best regards,
Bojan