What is a Salesforce Email Bounce Report?
A Salesforce Email Bounce Report provides visibility into email delivery failures across your CRM records. When Bounce Management is enabled (Setup → Email → Deliverability → Activate Bounce Management), Salesforce automatically populates bounce data on Lead, Contact, and Person Account records. The system displays an alert icon next to bounced email addresses in record details, highlights panels, and activity timelines (requires Enhanced Email). Once flagged, Salesforce prevents sending to that address until updated or confirmed valid.
How to Create Email Bounce Reports:
Salesforce Classic: Use standard Bounced Leads and Bounced Contacts reports available from the Leads and Contacts tabs. These pre-built reports show all records with bounced email addresses.
Lightning Experience: Standard bounce report types are not available in Lightning. Create custom reports using Lead or Contact report types, adding EmailBouncedReason, EmailBouncedDate, and IsEmailBounced fields. Filter where EmailBouncedDate is not blank to identify all bounced records.
Email Log Files: Navigate to Setup → Email Log Files to request detailed delivery logs for the past 30 days. Logs contain bounce reasons, delivery status, and diagnostic information not available in standard fields.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot): Access the Email Bounce Report under Account Engagement Reports → Marketing Assets → Emails → Email Bounces. View bounce data for the past 12 months with graphics showing total bounces, hard vs. soft bounce breakdown, and exportable prospect-level details including bounce reasons.
Key Bounce Fields:
EmailBouncedReason: Text field containing the bounce error message (e.g., "invalid mailbox," "domain not found," "mailbox full").
EmailBouncedDate: Date/time stamp when the bounce was recorded.
IsEmailBounced: Boolean field indicating bounce status (available on EmailMessage object).
Hard vs. Soft Bounces:
Hard Bounces: Permanent delivery failures requiring immediate removal. Causes include non-existent email addresses, invalid domains (misspelled), or permanent server blocks. Salesforce displays alert icons only for hard bounces. Industry benchmark: keep hard bounce rate below 2% to protect sender reputation.
Soft Bounces: Temporary delivery failures that may resolve. Causes include full mailboxes, server temporarily unavailable, or message size limits. Salesforce retries soft-bounced emails for up to 72 hours. After 5 failed delivery attempts without engagement, records may convert to hard bounced status. Monitor addresses that consistently soft bounce over 7-10 days.
Bounce Reporting Limitations:
Salesforce bounce tracking has notable gaps: bounce fields may not populate for emails not linked to Lead/Contact records; soft bounces often show only generic "undeliverable" status without specific reasons; bounce data depends on recipient servers returning Non-Delivery Reports (NDR)—if servers don't send NDRs, Salesforce won't log bounce reasons. Email relay configurations may prevent bounce data from returning to Salesforce. Invalid domain emails retry for ~24 hours (10 attempts at increasing intervals) before marking as permanent failure.
Key Takeaways
- Enable Bounce Management in Setup → Email → Deliverability to activate bounce tracking on Leads, Contacts, and Person Accounts
- Lightning Experience requires custom reports using EmailBouncedReason and EmailBouncedDate fields (standard bounce reports only in Classic)
- Keep bounce rates below 2% to protect sender reputation and deliverability
- Native AppExchange solutions provide automated bounce management with real-time verification within Salesforce
Need comprehensive bounce management beyond standard Salesforce reporting? MassMailer provides built-in email verification, automated bounce handling, real-time tracking, and list hygiene tools—all native to Salesforce.
