Why bounces matter
Each hard bounce tells Gmail, Microsoft and other providers that you’re mailing a list you haven’t kept clean. If your bounce rate climbs above a couple of percent, more of your emails can end up in spam, including emails to good addresses. Old lists, event badge scans and bought data are the usual causes.
The guard stops the worst addresses from being emailed at all. Skipped recipients are never sent anything, so they can’t count as bounces against your domain. The guard uses the free quick check and any mailbox results you’ve already paid for — it doesn’t run a paid mailbox check on your recipients, so a campaign never confirms a live inbox for free; verify mailboxes separately when you need certainty.
The three guard settings
| Setting | What gets skipped |
|---|---|
| Skip invalid addresses (recommended), the default | Addresses the quick check or a mailbox check marks as invalid: bad syntax, a domain that doesn’t exist or has no mail server, a recent hard bounce, or a mailbox that doesn’t exist. |
| Skip invalid and risky addresses | Everything above, plus role inboxes (info@, hr@), disposable or mistyped domains, and people who have left their company. |
| Off — email everyone | Nothing extra. Dead domains and recent hard bounces will be emailed and count against your sender reputation. |
Whichever setting you choose, recipients already flagged in your CRM as bounced or unsubscribed are still skipped, as before.
New campaigns use Skip invalid addresses automatically, so you’re protected even if you never open the setting.
Change the guard for a campaign
- Open the campaign in the campaign builder.
- In the right-hand panel, click Campaign settings.
- Find Deliverability guard, below Send from and the daily limit.
- Choose one of the three options. The note under the menu explains what the option will skip.
- Save the campaign as usual.
If you have access to Email Verification, a Verify these mailboxes first → link under the menu takes you to it.
When to choose each setting
- •Skip invalid suits most sales and nurture campaigns. It removes addresses that are certain to bounce and keeps everyone else.
- •Skip invalid and risky suits cold outreach and large one-off sends, where you want only named, personal inboxes. It also avoids emailing people you know have moved on.
- •Off should be rare, for example a small send to a list you have just verified yourself and want to email word for word.
What happens when you start the campaign
The guard runs when the campaign starts. You don’t need to have run a quick check first, because recipients are checked at launch. Running a quick check in advance does let you see the numbers early.
Before launch, Vedain’s pre-start check may warn you, for example: “Deliverability check: 42 of 1,500 recipients will be skipped (30 domain has no mail server, 12 hard-bounced recently) to protect your sender reputation.” You can go ahead or cancel and review your audience first.
Skipped recipients are still added to the campaign with the status skipped, so you have a record of who was left out and why.
Review the Skipped tab
- Open the campaign’s detail page.
- In the recipient list, click the Skipped tab (next to Bounced).
- Each row shows the person and a reason, such as “skipped — no mail server”, “skipped — hard-bounced recently”, “skipped — mailbox does not exist”, “skipped — role address” or “skipped — left the company”.
Use the reasons to clean up at the source. Fix obvious typos with Fix typos in Email Verification, update people who have moved on, and remove dead records. Next time they’ll be emailed or left out on purpose.
If every recipient is skipped
If every recipient in a campaign is skipped (bounced, unsubscribed or undeliverable), nothing will ever be sent. Vedain tells the person who created the campaign with a notification titled Campaign has no deliverable recipients, which gives the campaign name and how many recipients were skipped. This usually means the audience came from an old or bad list. Check the Skipped tab for the reasons.
Recommended workflow before a big send
- Clean the records. Run Data Health on your leads or contacts to clear placeholders, fix names for personalisation and classify email types.
- Run the free quick check. In Email Verification, click Check all emails, then Fix typos if any are found.
- Verify mailboxes for the audience that matters. For a large or cold send, run mailbox verification so addresses whose inbox no longer exists are marked invalid. Start it a day ahead, because big batches take hours. You pay only for definite answers, and new workspaces get 50 free checks.
- Upload outside lists before importing. Use Check a list to verify event or vendor lists (CSV or Excel, up to 200,000 addresses), download the results CSV and import only the good addresses.
- Pick the guard setting. Leave Skip invalid addresses on, or choose Skip invalid and risky addresses for cold outreach.
- Start the campaign and read the pre-start warning. Then check the Skipped tab once it’s running.
- Watch the Bounced tab. Bounced recipients are flagged in the CRM and skipped by future sends automatically.