Open Leads is committed to maintaining high deliverability rates for email that is sent out from our application.

One of the most important elements of this is maintaining good relationships with the major ISPs, and the way we handle their email bounced from their systems is a key variable in that process.

Open Leads Email system manages bounces and classifies them as either “hard” or “soft” depending on what message is received back from the various ISPs that mail is sent to.

So what is the difference between a “hard” bounce and “soft” bounce, anyway?

Hard Bounces
We consider an email to be “hard bouncing” if the error message we get back from your leads email provider indicates a permanent condition, such as:

* email account doesn’t exist
* there is a spelling error in the email address (htomail.com versus hotmail.com, etc.)

In this instance, these leads will be blocked from your Open Leads Mail System – and will not be included in any mass emails. This will save you from using up credits on a bad address, and will serve to maintain good relations with the major ISPs by not bombarding them with repeated requests for mail delivery to non-existent email addresses.

Soft Bounce
If the error message we get back from your member’s email provider does not meet the criteria for a hard bounce, then the error is considered a soft bounce. Soft bounces can be due to the lead’s email inbox being over the allotted space limit, or other temporary problem.

If the email address generates an occasional soft bounce error, it will be logged but no other action will be taken. However, if the email address continues to return soft bounce errors for several days, then that then we will consider that a hard bounce.