A bounce — "delivery failed", "user unknown" — means the brand's address no longer works. Because pitches go out from *your* inbox, those notices land in your inbox rather than ours, which is why a few of them can feel like a flood.
What Roster already does about it
- Addresses are verified just before they are pitched. If an address would bounce, the pitch is not sent, you are told so, and it does not count against your sends.
- A detected hard bounce is suppressed platform-wide. That address stops being pitched by anyone and drops out of the brand feed.
- A run of hard bounces pauses your automation. If a meaningful share of your sends hard-bounce inside a week, automated outreach switches itself off to protect your sending reputation.
- Bounce detection reads your connected Gmail inbox. If Settings → Email & outreach shows "Inbox monitoring needs Google permission", reconnect Gmail and grant read access — otherwise your bounces are never seen.
Soft failures such as a full mailbox, greylisting or an out-of-office reply are not treated as bounces, and are nothing to act on.
What to check yourself
- Open Settings → Email & outreach and look for a red banner. If sending itself is broken, it names the problem and the fix.
- If automated outreach has switched off, turn it back on from the Automated Outreach panel once the error is cleared.
- Check that your own email provider has not flagged or limited your account for unusual activity.
- Notice whether the bounces come from one run or are spread across everything — one bad batch is a different problem from a connection-wide one.
When to bring us in
Constant bounces across many sends are not normal, and that needs a human look at your specific account. Open the in-app support widget (bottom-right) and chat with the assistant, or use the "Talk to the team directly" form. Tell us roughly how many bounces you are seeing and which email provider you connected.