Send emails to contacts who previously bounced

A bounced email is one which cannot be delivered to the recipient's email server. When an email sent to a contact bounces, HubSpot may prevent you from sending future emails to that contact. This helps protect your sender reputation. 

Not all bounces are permanent. Depending on the nature of the bounce, you can try to resend email to a bounced email address, audit your bounced email addresses, or unbounce an email address.

Understand how bounces work in HubSpot 

HubSpot automatically does not send to contacts that have bounced previously for a permanent reason (e.g., invalid recipient, recipient not found, etc.) in the next send to protect your sender reputation.

These contacts will appear on the Not Sent tab on the email performance page. There is no need to filter or delete these contacts to prevent sending to them. However, you may decide that these contacts are stale and/or bad addresses that are no longer relevant to keep in your database for future email sends.

Because bounces are associated with email addresses and not the contact record, you can update your contact's email address. Any bounces associated with the old email address will not carry over to the new email address. Likewise, if you update a contact's email address to one that has hard bounced before, the contact will become ineligible for email.

View bounced contacts

You can create filters or segments that identify contacts who have hard bounced when sent marketing emails from your HubSpot account. 

View all contacts who bounced on a specific marketing email

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
2. Click the name of a sent marketing email. 
3. On the email performance page, click the Recipients tab.
4. In the left column, click Bounced.
5. To view the reason a contact bounced, click Expand in the Date column. 
6. To create a segment of all contacts from an email who bounced:
   • Click the Actions dropdown menu in the top right and select Create a new segment. 
   • In the dialog box, enter a name for the segment, then click Create segment. 

View all contacts who have hard bounced on any marketing email

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to CRM > Segments.
2. In the top right, click Create segment. 
3. In the top right, click Next. 
4. In the segment editor, click the edit edit icon and enter a name for your segment. 
5. In the left column, click Add filter. 
6. In the second column, click Contact properties, then click Email hard bounce reason. 
7. Click the top dropdown menu and select is known. 
8. In the top right, click Review and save. 

Remove a contact's hard bounce

If you know that an email address is valid, you can unbounce the contact to restore marketing email eligibility.

Understand requirements to unbounce a contact

Because sending marketing emails to an invalid email address can harm sender reputation, ensure the following before unbouncing a contact: 

• If you aren't using HubSpot's free tools, you are sending marketing emails using an email sending domain.
• You have received an email from the bounced email address confirming that the email address is valid and they want to receive marketing emails from you. 
• Any issues with the recipient's email server causing the email to bounce have been resolved. Learn more about resolving issues with delivered emails. 
• You haven't unbounced more than 2% of the total contacts in your account this month. 
• The contact hasn't been unbounced previously. 
• The contact isn't a global bounce. 

Unbounce contacts

Contacts who have hard bounced once will have a "Contact has bounced" alert on their contact record where you can unbounce them. If the contact instead has a "Contact has bounced globally" alert, you will need to contact HubSpot Support to potentially unbounce them. 

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to CRM > Contacts.
2. Click the name of the contact.
3. In the top left, click Unbounce above the contact's name.

4. In the dialog box, select the I confirm that this email address is correct checkbox. 
5. Click Unbounce this contact.