Understanding Email Bounce Rates and How to Reduce Them
Mar 16, 2025
Has it ever happened to you that you sent an email, and you never got a response from the other end? It's with such things that bounce rate comes into play when talking about email messaging. Now that you know what I'm talking about, you must be an email marketer who is fed up with those bounces. No sulking, though, I am here to tabulate everything for you in a very easy, conversational way.
Bounce Rate of Email
An email bounce rate represents the percentage of emails that fails to deliver the letter to any destination. In other words, you send a message only to get it back-the address is wrong or the mailbox is full. Bounces can be classified into two types: hard bounce and soft bounce.
Hard Bounce vs. Soft Bounce
Hard Bounce
A hard bounce implies an email delivery that can never take place. These conditions arise mainly due to the following reasons:
The email address is fake.
The domain does not exist.
The recipient's mail server has blacklisted you for good.
Example: You tipped off an email just to john.doe@emailtypoo.com, which has no domain. Boom! Your email gets rejected right away.
Soft Bounce
This feels more like the scenario is troublesome. Things could come right before delivery happens. Some reasons might be:
Recipient inbox is full
Mail servers are down
Email is large
Example: You are sending one marketing email to 1,000 customers. Some have full-blown inboxes, and these mail servers reject your email. But they may take gravity and up-space later on.
How to Minimize Email Bounce Rate
Now that you've identified the disparity between hard and soft bouncing, let's embark on the most effective practices to minimize this bounce rate.
1. Clean Your Email List Regularly
Extract invalid and inactive email addresses, for example, try using email verification toolsets, such as No2Bounce to filter out invalid email addresses.
2. Use Double Opt-in
Ask users to confirm their email addresses when they collect them, so that you only need to send emails to genuine contacts.
3. Monitor Your Sender Reputation
ISPs check your email reputation. Too many of your emails are bounced, and you will be barred.
4. Avoid Using Spammy Content
Some keywords activate spam filters. Do not excessively “free,” “guaranteed,” and use ALL CAPS in your subject lines.
5. Check Email Formatting and Attachments
An oversized attachment or improper HTML formatting is most likely with a bounced email. Keep it neat and simple.
6. Authenticate Your Email
All emails should be equipped with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records that verify the message.
Real-life example
Consider an e-commerce brand called "ShopEase," which started a new sale. It sends emails to 50,000 customers, and 5,000 emails bounce back. Checking, they find:
3,000 were hard bounces due to invalid or fake emails.
2,000 were soft bounces due to partially filled inboxes.
After cleaning their email list and using a double opt-in system, ShopEase reduced the bounce rate from 60% in the next campaign.
Key Takeaways
Email bounce rates can damage your email deliverability as well as the possible reputation of the sender.
Hard bounces are denoting a 'permanent' failure while soft bounces refer to some type of temporary failure.
Regular email list cleaning, double opt-in, and authentication can all contribute to reducing bounce rates.
Content that looks spam and weighty attachments should be avoided to boost deliverability.
Conclusion
Effective management of your bounce email rate would maintain a good sender's reputation and guarantee that emails reach their final destination. Regular cleaning of the email list, implementing authentication protocols and avoiding spammy contents are some of the solutions to improving email deliverability.
Keep testing, optimizing, and monitoring your campaigns to ensure that they are successful.
FAQ
What indeed is an acceptable bounce rate for emails?
Bounces will usually very well happen under 2% but any bounce rate higher than 5% will raise a flag.
Can I resubmit a bounced email?
Resending a soft bounce email is permitted, hard bounce emails however, should be purged from your list.
How do I know my bounce rate on email?
Usually, the bounce rate analytics will be available on most email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, SendGrid, HubSpot.
Do email bounces affect my email reputation?
Yes, Too many bounces may give email providers the belief that you are a spammer leading to reduced deliverability of emails.
How often do I need to do cleanup in my email list?
To maintain a healthy email list, cleaning shall be necessary at least three or six times each year.