| Pardot | |
|---|---|
| Their stated threshold | Salesforce's guidance for Account Engagement points at bounce rates under 2%, with deliverability support for accounts running their own sending domains. |
| What happens if you cross it | Support is contractual and consultative. A list quality problem becomes a conversation with your account team rather than an automated restriction. |
| Where the bounce data lives | The email report for the send, and the prospect's activity history for the individual bounce. List email reports separate hard and soft bounces. |
| How bounces are classified | Pardot marks a prospect undeliverable after a hard bounce and after repeated soft bounces, and the prospect record carries the history so the reason is visible on the record sales is looking at. |
Bringing the rate down
Each step is an action inside Pardot, in the order worth taking them.
Segment prospects by the bounce on their record
A dynamic list on mailability status gives you the set. Adding the prospect source shows where they came from.
Check whether the address came from Salesforce or a form
Pardot prospects arrive from forms, imports and the Salesforce sync. A sales-entered address in the CRM is a different problem from a form fill.
Talk to sales before deleting anything
Prospect records map to leads and contacts that sales owns. Deleting a record because marketing cannot mail it is rarely the right call.
Add validation to Pardot forms
Form handlers and Pardot forms accept format-valid addresses. A check at submission stops the junk becoming a prospect and a CRM record at once.
Store the verdict as a custom prospect field
That gives both marketing automation and Salesforce reporting the same fact to act on, rather than each inferring it separately.
The mistake people make here
A bounce report mixes two causes that need opposite responses: addresses that do not exist, and receivers refusing mail they could have delivered. The first is fixed by checking the list. The second is a sending problem and no amount of cleaning will move it.
Questions people ask
What happens to a Pardot prospect that hard bounces?
It is marked undeliverable, marketing email stops, and the bounce appears in the prospect's activity history where sales can see it.
Does deleting a prospect remove the Salesforce record?
No. They are separate objects joined by the connector, and deleting the prospect while the lead survives means the sync can recreate it.
How do I stop sending to undeliverable prospects?
Pardot already does. The useful work is finding out which source produced them and stopping that, rather than managing the suppression.