salesloft cadence paused: bounced email

TL;DR

Salesloft pauses a prospect's cadence when their email bounces, because continuing to send to dead addresses hurts deliverability for everyone. The pause is protective. Don't just resume: remove or fix the bounced address first, then resume. Resuming onto a dead address re-pauses and teaches the system nothing.

The query

salesloft cadence paused: bounced email

Use this when

• A cadence pauses with a bounced email
• Many prospects pause at once
• Support asks whether to resume a paused cadence

Not for

• Salesloft authentication errors
• Cadence step configuration issues
• Reply detection problems

Steps

1. Read the bounce type

Check whether the bounce is hard (address doesn't exist) or soft (mailbox full, temporary). Hard bounces mean the address is dead; soft bounces may deserve one retry. The bounce reason decides the action.

Expected output: the bounce classified as hard or soft.

2. Remove or correct the address

Hard bounce: remove the prospect or replace the address with a verified one. Soft bounce: wait and retry once. Never resume a cadence onto an uncorrected hard bounce.

Expected output: the dead address gone from the cadence.

3. Resume after the fix

Only now resume the prospect. Verify the cadence continues from the right step and the prospect doesn't get duplicate or out-of-order messages.

Expected output: the prospect active again with correct sequencing.

4. Fix the list source

Mass pauses mean the import source is dirty: stale lists, guessed emails, or bad enrichment. Clean the source list before the next import, or every cadence will pause the same way.

Expected output: the import source cleaned or replaced.

Variant phrasings

salesloft prospect paused bounced

Steps 1 through 3: classify, fix, then resume.

salesloft cadence paused automatically

Step 4's source hygiene for the mass-pause case.

Why it happens

Bounces are list-quality feedback, and the auto-pause is Salesloft forcing you to listen. Teams treat each pause as an individual incident and resume reflexively, which preserves the dirty list and guarantees the next wave of pauses. The bounce is data about your data.

Edge cases

• Catch-all domains produce soft-looking bounces that never resolve. Treat persistent ones as hard.
• Role addresses (info@, sales@) bounce more and convert less. Segment them out.
• Resume timing matters: a prospect resumed weeks later gets a stale message. Review before resuming old pauses.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_f6Z7YPylN8-ozEtVN3a17A

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_f6Z7YPylN8-ozEtVN3a17A

Thread query: salesloft cadence paused: bounced email

TL;DR: Salesloft pauses a prospect's cadence when their email bounces, because continuing to send to dead addresses hurts deliverability for everyone. The pause is protective. Don't just resume: remove or fix the bounced address first, then resume. Resuming onto a dead address re-pauses and teaches the system nothing.