Bounces
A bounce is a failed delivery. Two kinds:
- Hard bounce — the address doesn't exist. Remove these prospects; retrying only harms your reputation.
- Soft bounce — temporary (full mailbox, server busy). May succeed on retry, but repeated soft bounces deserve investigation.
PersistIQ marks the prospect as bounced so you can filter for them in Prospects. A bounce rate above a few percent means list quality needs work — and is itself a spam signal to receiving servers.
Auto-replies
An auto-reply is an automated response — out-of-office, "I'm no longer at this company", mailbox-full notices. They aren't human replies, so they shouldn't advance your sequence.
PersistIQ's default triggers treat auto-replies sensibly: an auto-reply pauses the campaign for that prospect rather than counting it as a real reply. See The seven default triggers in the Triggers & Automation collection.
The special case: "left the company"
Auto-replies that say the person has moved are lead-gen gold — a new contact at the same company. Work them manually: look up the successor, add them as a prospect, and reference the departed colleague.
Distinguishing replies from auto-replies
In practice: human replies are specific to your message; auto-replies are generic and time-stamped patterns. PersistIQ's trigger automation handles the routine separation so your sequences don't break on vacation season.