Keeping email bounce rates as low as possible is your ticket to higher deliverability.
The subject line email copy will make a difference only when the email reaches your target audience. Hence, monitoring your email bounces and keeping them low is crucial for higher returns.
This guide will go over email bounce rate basics and give you 9 useful tactics to help you reduce your number of bounces and get more emails delivered to your subscriber's inbox.
What is the email bounce rate?
Email bounce rate is the number of emails that bounce from the recipient's server and do not get delivered. An email bounces due to permanent or temporary issues, like the wrong email address, the recipient's full inbox, etc. The recipient's server sends an automated bounce message - 'Non-Delivery Report'.
The Non-Delivery Report (NDR) contains the details of the particular problem with that email delivery. The recipient's tab of sent marketing emails holds complete information regarding the bounce type and server response.
What does it mean when an email bounces?
When an email bounces, it means that the email couldn’t be delivered to the recipient and was returned to the sender. In simpler terms, it’s akin to sending a letter that gets sent back to you with a message saying, “This address doesn’t work.” A bounced email indicates a delivery failure, which could be due to a variety of reasons, such as an incorrect email address, a full inbox, or issues with the recipient’s email server.
For you, as the sender, it’s important to investigate why the bounce occurred and address the issue. This might involve checking if the recipient’s email address was entered correctly or ensuring that there are no problems with your own email system.
A bounced email disrupts communication and can affect ongoing interactions or business operations. To prevent future bounces, you should verify email addresses, fix any issues with your email system, and update information if necessary.
What causes an email to bounce?
An email bounces due to many different reasons, including:
The recipient's email address is wrong or invalid.
The recipient's email address no longer exists.
The recipient's server is down, and they couldn't receive the email at the moment.
The recipient's inbox is full.
The email content size is too large.
The recipient's mailbox is not configured correctly.
The email message does not meet the recipient server's sender requirements
Two types of email bounces
Email bounces are divided into two categories based on the reason behind the bounces:
1. Hard bounces
Hard bounces happen due to permanent problems such as invalid email addresses or non-existent domain names. This is common when users use a temporary or fake email account.
You should use double opt-in to verify the email address and segment users who didn't verify their email addresses. You can also use email verification tools to validate the email IDs provided by an individual.
2. Soft bounces
Soft bounces occur for many temporary reasons, including issues with the recipient's server or full inbox.
To avoid soft bounces, you should try sending emails a few times, and if the results are the same, suppress such email addresses.
💡 Related guide: Hard Bounce vs. Soft Bounce: Definition And Best Practices
How do you calculate the email bounce rate?
You should have the following figures to calculate the email bounce rate:
Total number of bounced emails
Total number of emails sent
Once you have that, use the following formula:
For instance, if you send 10,000 emails and out of those 2000 emails get bounced, the email bounce rate will be ( 2000 / 10,000 ) X 100 = 20%
Free Tool: Use this free email bounce rate calculator to calculate your email bounce rate instantly.
What is a good email bounce rate?
The answer, as always, is that it depends.
Each industry has its bounce rate because it targets different demographics, geographics, and individuals with diverse interests, jobs, and preferences.
A bounce rate between 0.5 - 1% is considered good, as per Mailchimp's industry benchmarks.
It's important to remember that few bounces are normal in a subscriber's lifecycle journey. They change their job titles, move to a different city, and abandon their old email address.
However, a higher bounce rate than the industry average can signal bad email list hygiene practices. To help you out here, we will discuss 9 effective ways to lower your bounce rate and get more emails delivered to recipients' inboxes.
9 ways to reduce email bounce rate
You can take the following steps to decrease the email bounce rate and increase the deliverability of your emails:
1. Maintain email list hygiene
One of the most helpful ways to reduce email bounces is analyzing, cleaning, and maintaining your mailing list. Here are some of the best practices you should follow to maintain email list hygiene:
Identify and remove bounced email addresses. With Mailmodo, you can put these addresses in a suppression list and avoid sending them emails altogether.
Verify and validate the existing email addresses using email verification tools or by sending an email to ask users whether it is the right email or not.
Email Marketing Tip:
— Chase Dimond | Email Marketing Nerd 📧 (@ecomchasedimond) May 22, 2022
Don’t forget to suppress subscribers who haven’t opened any of your emails within the last 3-6 months.
A) they’re adding no value to you
B) they’re costing you $
Removing them will help clean your list and reduce what you’re paying your email platform.
💡 Related guide: How to Maintain Email Hygiene with Email Practices
2. Set up double opt-in to verify the email authenticity
It's always better to verify the user's permission when signing up for your email list. You should set up a double opt-in and ask subscribers to confirm their email addresses when signing up for your email list. It helps you segment users who confirmed their email addresses from those who didn't. You can simply remove the latter from your email list.
3. Authenticate domain via SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
Your ESP should help you authenticate the domain name as it signals to email clients that you are who you claim to be and are not spamming the inbox. Three major email authentication protocols you should look out for are:
SPF: SPF ensures that you are sending email from an authentic server
DKIM: DKIM keys ensure that email content is not tampered with.
DMARC: DMARC records take authoritative action in case SPF/DKIM fails.
4. Use a reputable and reliable email service provider
Ensure that you use a reliable ESP to send email from a reputable IP address. Mailmodo ensures that IP and domain are warmed up to increase your chance of getting delivered to the recipient's inbox.
5. Set up a preference centre
Over the subscriber's lifecycle, changes in their behaviour, preferences, interests, job titles, location, etc., are inevitable. You should set up a preference centre to navigate such changes. It's a dashboard where you ask subscribers to update or manage their preferences to send them only relevant and timely emails.
💡 Related guide: How to Create Powerful Preference Center to Retain Your Subscribers
6. Validate emails using email verification tools
Verify and validate the email addresses in your email list using the correct email verification tools. Otherwise, the probability of getting hit by a hard bounce can be high.
These verification tools offer insights into whether the email address is valid and if the recipient's inbox is accepting emails at the moment. Having such insights before sending the email is helpful for marketers in tackling the issue of hard and soft bounces.
7. Avoid free sender domains
If you're using free email domains such as @gmail.com, your emails might end up in the spam folder. Also, those emails will not pass the DMARC policy check for Yahoo, Gmail, and AOL.
It increases your email bounce rate and spoils your domain reputation. So, use a business-suitable domain to send your email marketing campaigns.
8. Check the size of your emails
One reason why emails bounce is that the recipient's server refuses to let the email pass through due to heavy email content. Different email clients allow different file sizes to land in the inbox. In such a scenario, it's important to be familiar with the acceptable file size to reduce your email bounce rate and land in the user's inbox.
9. Constantly monitor the email analytics
Keep an eye on your email analytics, especially email deliverability, as none of the metrics would matter if your emails were not delivered to the recipient's inbox.
Gathering data from different email campaigns and drawing insights can help you identify which email addresses are causing the highest bounces. Remove such emails from your email list to maintain your sender's reputation and email deliverability.
Read how SBNRI managed their suppression list with Mailmodo, leading to a 16% increase in open rates.
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Conclusion
Even though you get to maintain your bounce rate within the industry standard, the game doesn't stop there. It's just the tip of the iceberg. A lower bounce rate won't be beneficial if your emails are not making it to the recipient's inbox. This means that you should strive to ensure higher deliverability and a lower bounce rate.
So, we recommend you read out 12 tips to improve your email deliverability and get those opens and click-throughs rolling.
