Why Contractor Info@ and Sales@ Emails Bounce and How to Reach the Right Person

If you sell to the trades like construction, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or roofing, you have probably run into the same problem. You email addresses like info@ or sales@ and they bounce, and then you email a real person at the same company and it goes through with no issue.

That’s not random. On contractor and trades domains, role-based inboxes are often aliases, forwards, locked down inboxes, or mailboxes that broke when the company switched providers. This article breaks down the seven most common setups behind those bounces, what they usually mean, and how to reach real buyers without hurting your deliverability.

TL;DR

• Role-based contractor emails like info@, sales@, estimating@, dispatch@, and service@ are often set up as aliases or forwards, locked down by IT, or abandoned over time, which is why they bounce far more often than an email of a real person.

• When role emails bounce but messages to real people go through, it is usually a problem with how those inboxes are set up, and not an issue with your sending domain.

• Start with real, named buyers like the owner, GM, ops lead, service manager, or project manager instead of emailing info@.

What Role-Based Email Are at Contractor Companies

A role based email is tied to a job or function and not a specific person.

Common examples include

• info@, sales@, support@, admin@, billing@

When you sell to contractors, you will also see trade specific role inboxes like:

• estimating@, bids@, quotes@

• dispatch@, service@, scheduling@

• permits@, safety@

• shop@, warehouse@, fleet@

• ap@, ar@, accounting@

Role based emails exist so multiple people can receive messages tied to a specific function like sales, service, or billing. They are used to catch general inquiries even as staff and responsibilities change. Over time, these inboxes often get neglected, locked down, or misconfigured, which is why they bounce more often and perform poorly for outreach.

The 7 Common Reasons That Cause Role Emails to Bounce

In practice, these bounces are caused by a handful of repeatable email setups inside contractor companies. The seven scenarios below show what is possibly happening behind the scenes and how to adjust your outreach without hurting deliverability.

1) The role address was only an alias, and the alias got deleted.

What’s happening
Info@ or sales@ just forwarded to one person, usually the owner or office manager. It was never something anyone logged into. When the company cleaned up email or switched providers, the alias got removed. No one noticed until outside emails started bouncing.

What the bounce looks like
Hard bounces like: "user unknown", "mailbox not found", or 550 5.1.1 "address does not exist".

What to do
Stop sending to that address. Use a real person at the company instead, like the owner, GM, operations lead, service manager, or office manager. Repeatedly retrying a hard bounce only hurts your sending reputation.

2) The contractor changed domains, but the old email is still being reused everywhere

What’s happening
Trade companies rebrand, switch domains, or move from something like .net to .com. The old emails do not disappear but stay in vendor CRMs, old PDFs, supplier portals, estimates, and outdated web pages. People keep emailing the old domain long after it stopped working.

What the bounce looks like
Several emails at the same domain bounce, not just one role address.

What to do
If multiple addresses at the same domain bounce, assume the domain itself is the problem and not a bad contact. Check the company’s website, confirm the active domain, and rebuild your contacts using the domain they actually use today.

3) A Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 move broke shared inboxes

What’s happening
After a provider change, shared inboxes and role routing often break. They might not get set up again, lose permissions, or get removed when licenses change. This is common in small offices where email was set up once and never really maintained.

What the bounce looks like
Hard bounces saying something like "the recipient cannot be found", even though the domain works and emails to real people sometimes go through.

What to do
Do not trust the role inbox. Switch to named contacts instead, or use a quick call or LinkedIn touch to confirm who actually handles vendor conversations.

4) The role address forwards to a mailbox that is full, locked, or no longer used

What’s happening
The role address still exists, but it forwards to an inbox that is no longer in a usable state. It may point to a former employee, an inbox that is rarely monitored, or an account that was restricted after a security issue. From the outside everything looks valid, but delivery fails once the message reaches the final mailbox.

What the bounce looks like
You see delivery delays, mailbox full errors, or inconsistent results where some messages deliver and others do not.

What to do
Assume forwarded role addresses are unreliable. If you choose to test them, keep volume low and do not include them in primary sends where they can quietly harm deliverability.

5) The role inbox exists, but it rejects unknown senders or requires an allowlist

What’s happening
Info@ and sales@ get flooded with spam. Many contractor offices respond by locking these inboxes down so only known customers, website forms, or approved senders are allowed through.

What the bounce looks like
Bounces that say the message was "rejected", "blocked", "not authorized", or "the recipient address was rejected".

What to do
Even if one message goes through, this is not something you can scale for outbound. When selling to trades, reaching a named contact and backing it up with a short call usually works better than pushing more email volume.

6) The role inbox used to route into a tool, and the tool changed

What’s happening
Service@, support@, scheduling@, or quotes@ are sometimes fed into a helpdesk or ticketing system. Then the site gets rebuilt, the tool is changed, or an integration stops working. The email address stays on the website, but nothing is actually listening on the other end anymore.

What the bounce looks like
You may see hard bounces if the alias was removed, or rejection messages depending on how the old system handled incoming mail.

What to do
Do not treat service@ or support@ as a general contact for selling. For most offers, you are better off going straight to the buyer by name, such as the owner, operations lead, GM, or the manager who owns that area.

7) The role inbox existed, then got abandoned and removed

What’s happening
In many small contractor offices, a role address like estimating@ gets set up for bids, but real conversations quickly move to personal inboxes. The role address sits idle, sometimes for months. When email accounts get cleaned up, unused addresses are removed. Role inboxes disappear more often than emails tied to actual people.

What the bounce looks like
A standard hard bounce indicating there is no user.

What to do
Expect higher turnover with role addresses. If a large share of your list is made up of role emails, higher bounce rates are expected. Change your list to have more named contacts before increasing your send volume.

Common Bounce Pattern Explanations

Before drawing conclusions about your sending domain, it's worth looking at the bounce pattern first.

If one or two emails bounce at a company, it’s usually a single mailbox or alias problem. Suppress the address and replace it with a better contact.

If most emails at the same domain bounce, you are likely dealing with a domain level or routing issue, or a business that is no longer active.

If role emails bounce but messages to named people still deliver, that’s very common in trades. It points to unstable or restricted role inboxes rather than a problem with the domain as a whole.

Outreach Guide for Selling to Contractors Without Role Inbox Bounces

The following is a guide that focuses on practical ways to reach real decision makers, avoid preventable bounces, and keep your outreach clean as you scale.

1) Build your list around real people and not generic inboxes

If you sell to contractors or trades businesses, role-based emails like info@, sales@, estimating@, dispatch@, or service@ are risky. Those inboxes are often shared, forwarded, locked down, or abandoned over time. That hurts deliverability, wastes effort, and you end up spending more in the long run.

The easiest way to avoid that is to start with named contacts. Real people’s emails are far more stable and far more likely to be read and responded to than a generic inbox.

Good titles to focus on at small and mid-sized contractor businesses include:

• Owner or President

• General Manager

• Operations Manager

• Service Manager

• Project Manager for construction

• Office Manager

2) Use human-verified contact data to reduce bounces before you send

The goal is to stop guessing and to stay away from role-based emails altogether. When a real person has actually checked the contact, the data is far more reliable.

Human-verified leads are significantly more fresh, so you know the inbox is real and still active. They belong to an actual person rather than a shared address, which makes them more stable over time. Because someone has verified the details by hand, the email is far less likely to have typos or formatting issues. And since these inboxes are not the kind that get blasted with spam all day, they are much less likely to be blocked.

3) Keep role-based emails out of your campaigns by default

Treat role-based inboxes as suppressed by default, especially when you are working with contractor lists. If a list is filled with addresses like that, it usually means it’s not made up of real decision-makers and is much more likely to bounce.

Here is a simple rule of thumb: if role-based emails make up more than a small slice of your list, stop and rebuild the list using named, human-verified emails before you try to scale.

FAQ

Why does info@ bounce if it’s on the contractor’s website?

Because it might not even be a real mailbox. It could be an alias that no longer exists, a forward that stopped working, or an inbox set up to reject messages from people it does not recognize.

What does 550 5.1.1 "no such user" mean?

It means the mailbox does not exist at that domain and the message hard bounced. You should suppress that address and replace it with a different email instead.

What’s the safest generic address to start with for contractors?

None of them are truly safe. Generic inboxes are often shared, locked down, abandoned, or filtered heavily. They bounce more often and are less likely to reach the person you actually want to talk to. The safer approach is to use human-verified, named email addresses. They are far less likely to bounce and far more likely to be read by a real decision-maker.