Blocked vs Bounced deliveries
A bounce means the address is dead; a block means the email was refused as spam or on policy — the address is fine, so the lead stays in the sequence. Neither email was delivered, and blocked emails are counted apart from bounces.
Where: Automatic — a block shows as "Email blocked as spam — not delivered; the next step continues later" on the lead's activity line, as Blocked on the campaign's Emails tab and in the Campaigns list's hover; a bounce shows under Replies → Bounced, as Bounced on the Emails tab and as lead status Bounced
How to do it
- Open the lead (Leads, or a campaign's Leads tab) and read the activity line — or open the campaign's Emails tab and click the Bounced or Blocked chip to see the emails themselves.
- "Bounced" — the address failed permanently. The lead is Bounced and out of every campaign.
- "Email blocked as spam — not delivered; the next step continues later" — the email was refused on policy (spam filter, reputation, a blocklist listing, authentication). It wasn't delivered and isn't sent again; the lead is still active and their next step has been pushed back 3 days.
Good to know
- A policy block is recognised from wording like "message rejected", "blocked", "spam", "unsolicited", "reputation", "policy", "blacklist"/"blocklist", "not authenticated", "access denied" or Google's bulk-sender rejection. If the same report also says the address doesn't exist, the address failure wins and it is treated as a bounce.
- Effect of a block: the lead keeps their status and stays enrolled; the blocked email is not re-sent, and every active step for them is rescheduled 3 days later so the sequence carries on once the block has cooled. The email is marked Blocked: it never counts as opened, not opened or clicked, and it is never added into the campaign's Bounced, so a blocked day never reads as a bad list.
- Where blocked emails show: the Campaigns list (hover Sent or Bounced), the campaign's Analytics → Health (deliverability counts them as not delivered) and the Emails tab's Blocked chip and row status. A lead whose only emails were blocked hasn't been reached yet, so they aren't part of the people-based rates (opened, clicked, replied, positive, unsubscribed) until an email gets through.
- Blocked deliveries are recorded but do not appear in the Replies queue — the Bounced view lists only true bounces. A webhook Email bounced still fires with kind "blocked" so your CRM can tell the two apart.
- Don't confuse a blocked delivery with a Blocked contact: Blocked as a lead status means you (or an unsubscribe) put the person on your blocklist under Settings → Blocklist, and they will never be emailed again. Bounced and Unsubscribed are the other two suppression statuses; all three appear under Suppressed on the Leads page.
- Repeated policy blocks are a sender-reputation signal, not a list-quality one: check the mailbox's DNS (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) under Deliverability and keep warmup on. With Google Workspace mailboxes the refusal often comes from Google itself, before the email leaves your account.
Questions people ask
Why wasn't a rejected email counted as a bounce?
Because the server refused the sender, not the address. The email is counted as Blocked — shown beside Bounced, never in it — the lead stays in the campaign, and their next step goes out 3 days later. The blocked email itself isn't sent again.
How do I see which leads were blocked?
Open the campaign's Emails tab and click the Blocked chip (Export gives the same list as a CSV, with a blocked_at column). Blocked deliveries aren't listed in Replies; the lead's activity reads "Email blocked as spam — not delivered; the next step continues later", and the Email bounced webhook carries kind "blocked".
Why isn't Blocked part of Bounced?
They point at different fixes. Bounced measures your list — addresses that don't exist; a high rate means verify the list. Blocked measures your sending — reputation, content or authentication; a high count means look at the mailboxes and domains under Deliverability.