To optimize your email marketing campaigns, track core metrics like email bounce rate, open rate, and click-through rate (CTR).
A high bounce rate exceeding 5% signals problems with your current mailing list or your methods of building it.
For example, if your well-crafted email never reaches the recipient due to invalid addresses or inactive subscribers, it means your list needs cleaning.
Today, I’m going to provide a guide on how to optimize your email marketing campaigns by reducing your bounce rate.
So, let’s begin,
What is an Email Bounce Rate?
Email bounce rate is a metric that measures the percentage of email messages that were not successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox.
When you send an email, it goes through various stages, and at each stage, there is a potential for a bounce to occur.
For example, you sent a promotional email to 1,000 subscribers. If 50 of those emails bounce back because the addresses are invalid or the recipient’s inbox is full, your bounce rate is 5%.
This indicates that 5% of your emails didn’t reach their intended recipients, which can impact your campaign’s effectiveness.
Types of Email Bounce
Normally, there are two types of email bounce:
- Hard bounce
- Soft bounce
1. Hard Bounce
Hard bounces occur when an email cannot be delivered due to permanent issues with the recipient’s address. Here’s how these problems typically manifest:
- Invalid Email Address: If the email address you’re sending to is incorrect or no longer in use, your email will bounce. Regularly clean your email list to remove invalid addresses and boost your email delivery rate.
- Domain Doesn’t Exist: The domain part of the email address (the section after the “@”) might be incorrect or have expired. Verify that the domains you are emailing are valid and active to prevent these bounces.
- Blocked By Receiving Server: Your email might be blocked if your domain is blacklisted or flagged as spam. Ensure your sending domain is not on any blacklists and use reputable email marketing services to reduce this risk.
- Email Address Format Issues: Sometimes, emails bounce due to formatting issues in the address itself, such as a missing “@” or incorrect syntax. Double-check the format of email addresses in your list to avoid these problems.
- Spam Traps: Some hard bounces happen because your email hits a spam trap, an address set up to catch spammers. Use email validation services to filter out such addresses before sending your campaigns.
Addressing these hard bounce issues helps improve your email marketing bounce rate and ensures your messages reach the right audience.
2. Soft Bounce
A soft bounce happens when your email isn’t delivered due to a temporary issue. Here’s why this might happen and how to address it:
- Mailbox Is Full: If the recipient’s mailbox is full, your email will bounce. Encourage subscribers to clear space regularly to improve your email delivery rate.
- Busy Server or Temporary Server Issues: The recipient’s email server might be down or busy. Set up automatic retries to re-send your email when the server is active again.
- Message Is Too Large: If your email is too large for the recipient’s inbox, it will bounce temporarily. Keep your email content and attachments within limits to avoid this bounce marketing issue.
- Temporary Block by Receiving Server: Sometimes, the recipient’s email service provider may temporarily block your email due to anti-spam technology. Ensure your content complies with industry benchmarks.
- Issues with Your Email Service Provider: Your email marketing platform might experience disruptions. Regularly monitor your email marketer tools to prevent delivery issues.
Understanding these soft bounce reasons will help you improve your email bounce rates and ensure your email marketing campaigns run smoothly.
Stages of Email Bounce – Step by Step Process
The stages of email bounce typically follow these steps:
- Email Sent: You send an email to your list, and it is processed by your email marketing platform.
- Email Server Attempts Delivery: The email is transmitted to the recipient’s receiving email server. At this point, the server checks if the email address is valid and the message meets its requirements.
- Bounce Detection: If the email can’t be delivered, the server identifies the bounce as either a soft bounce or a hard bounce.
- Bounce Notification: You receive a notification of the undelivered emails. It would show you why the bounce occurred, such as issues with the IP address or a blocked domain.
- List Cleanup: After identifying bounces, you can clean your list by removing invalid addresses and improving email deliverability rates. Using tools like Mail Mint helps you prevent future bounces and maintain a clean list.
Why is It Important to Track Email Bounce Rate
If you are committed to running email marketing campaigns, then tracking the email bounce rate is very important both in terms of costs and results.
Following are a couple of important reasons why you should track the bounce rate actively.
- Improve Lead Quality: Tracking your email bounce rate helps you identify invalid or wrong email addresses. It allows you to refine your lead generation strategy and improve the quality of your leads.
- Ensure Accurate ROI: If your emails bounce, your ROI estimations may be different than expected. Monitoring this metric helps you understand your real reach and avoid wasting resources on invalid email addresses.
- Optimize Your Lead Funnel: After observing email bounce rates over several campaigns, you can refine your lead funnel copy, implement better email re-verification processes, and use an email verifier to improve list accuracy.
- Avoid ISP Flagging: Consistently sending to invalid addresses lowers your sender score, increasing the likelihood of being flagged by ISPs. Actively tracking bounce rates allows you to remove bounced emails and maintain a good reputation.
- Maximize Email Sending Limits: By keeping your email list clean, you avoid exceeding sending limits for invalid emails. It ensures more efficient use of your email marketing platform and resources.
How to Measure Email Bounce Rate
The email bounce rate is measured with the following formula:
- (Total Bounces/Total Emails Sent) x 100%
Let us take an example again to clarify you. Suppose you have 2000 subscribers and just launched a discount email campaign for Christmas. You noticed that 200 emails bounced.
Based on this example, let’s put the numbers in the formula:
- (200/2000) X 100% = 10%
This data can be accurately collected from your sending service logs & reports.
What is a Good Bounce Rate in Email Marketing?
An ideal bounce rate in email marketing is typically as close to zero as possible. In an ideal scenario, you’d want all of your emails to reach their intended recipients without any bounces.
However, expecting a completely zero bounce rate is often unrealistic due to factors like occasional typos in email addresses or temporary issues with email servers.
In practice, a reasonable and commonly accepted benchmark for a good average email bounce rate is around 2% or lower. This means that out of every 100 emails you send, you’d ideally want no more than 2 to bounce.
But, the fact is, the closest you can go towards zero is by ensuring you are collecting leads with high efficiency with proper validations and email verifications.
10 Effective Ways to Reduce Email Bounce Rate
Now that you understand the concept of email bounce rate, you must also know that it is not a dead end.
Following are a few proven ways you can ensure your email list is of high quality and can help you reduce your bounce rate significantly.
1. Verify Emails With a Reliable Tool
If you have an existing email list, you can use a trusted email verifier to find out which emails are still active and are no longer valid.
Some of these tools may identify disposable/temporary or flagged email addresses associated with spam traps that can affect your sender’s reputation.
That way, you can remove the faulty emails and continue with your email campaigns with high efficiency and low bounce rates.
Some popular tools for email verification are Clearout, ZeroBounce, etc.
2. Use Double Opt-in To Avoid Spam Lead Collection
A double opt-in email is a process of confirming and obtaining consent from a person before adding him/her to your email list.
Basically, when someone opts in via your lead form, an automated email is sent to click on a link to confirm a subscription. Once the link is clicked, the person will be added to your email list.
This will ensure,
- The email addresses are valid.
- The person provided his/her real email address.
- Prospect gave permission to email.
So, this is a great way to ensure high quality and eventually reduce bounce rates in email marketing.
3. Avoid Sending Cold Emails or Irrelevant Emails
To maintain a strong email marketing strategy, avoid sending emails to people who haven’t expressed interest or sending content that doesn’t align with their preferences.
At the same time, do not collect emails without consent and send emails out of the blue. It usually annoys them and increases the chance of being marked as spam.
4. Do Not Purchase Email Lists
Purchasing email lists is no longer reliable. It’s been quite some time since people have been more concerned about privacy and data protection.
Now, it’s almost illegal to collect and sell leads. Hence, if you are purchasing email lists, you are most likely helping someone succeed with an illegal business.
At the same time, there is no way to confirm the quality of the leads and how many others have bought the same email list.
Eventually, you can end up with a lot of faulty or frustrated individuals on the list that will either increase your bounce rate or reduce your email open rate.
5. Avoid Spam Triggers in Email Content
You can consider focusing on avoiding spam triggers on the email content you use. This may include
- Spammy keywords (such as free, guarantee, urgent, etc.) on the email subject line and preview text.
- Too much use of spammy keywords in the email body.
- Excessive use of capitalization and special characters.
- Email body content that doesn’t relate to the subject line at all.
- Too many links in the email body.
- No company business address or contact information is on the email body.
- No way to unsubscribe or change email preferences.
Avoiding these will save you from getting flagged by email clients. Instead, you can implement the best email subject lines without any spammy words.
6. Clean Your Email List Regularly
You must regularly invest time in identifying frequently bounced emails and remove them. This will ensure you only have quality leads and have to worry less about the email bounce rate.
If you have a large email list, using a reliable email list cleaner to carry this out every 3-6 months would be a great option.
7. Always Remember to Maintain A Good Email Sender Reputation
Your reputation as a “Sender” is regularly tracked by ISPs and email service providers to ensure they can detect potential spammers.
Hence, you must focus on quality in content and your lead list to avoid getting a low score as a sender.
If you are once considered a spammer, then every email from your domain can end up in spam boxes and eventually be blocked.
8. Send Emails With A Suitable Frequency
Sending emails at the right frequency is crucial. Bombarding your audience with tons of emails every week can be overwhelming, leading to unsubscribes or disengagement.
Many may even get too annoyed and block you, leading to bounces. Many email clients will also consider you a spammer if they notice too many emails from you in a short period.
On the other hand, waiting too long before sending emails to users can leave you with less scope to refine your email list, as many addresses may no longer stay valid.
So do make sure you maintain a healthy email frequency, maybe 1 email per week (or max 2).
9. Avoid Collecting Emails Without Permission
Many people often resort to collecting emails online, maybe via LinkedIn or YouTube channels. Unless you are looking for partnerships or affiliation, this is not something you should be doing.
Even so, simply collecting these emails without any permission may backfire since many emails that are available to the public may not be valid.
Using email confirmation and maintaining transparency about how you will be using the emails will help you get more valid opt-ins in your lead generation funnel and avoid a high bounce rate.
10. Use A Verified Domain
Make sure your domain is verified when running large email campaigns. Without a verified domain, many email clients may block or flag your emails as spam.
Verifying your domain helps build trust with internet service providers. It also increases the chances that your emails are delivered.
It also helps reduce your email bounce rate and ensures your emails reach the right audience.
Email Verification Tools to Maintain An Efficient Email List
In case you are willing to validate and verify your existing email lists, the following are a few tools you can look into.
i. Bouncer
Bouncer is an email verification software known for its user-friendly interface and high accuracy.
When you submit an email for verification, Bouncer immediately anonymizes it, ensuring privacy.
One of its notable features is the zero downtime policy. It assures users of uninterrupted service.
Bouncer offers various checks, including domain, syntax, catch-all server, and disposable email detection.
It even accommodates bulk verification. It also allows uploads of up to 250,000 emails at once.
ii. ZeroBounce
ZeroBounce is another tool for checking valid email addresses and follows strict rules for data security like GDPR, SOC 2, and PCI.
It has a feature called “Email List Enhancement” that can help you find out the names, locations, genders, etc., related to the email address.
This email verifier is considered one of the best out here.
iii. NeverBounce
NeverBounce is a helpful tool for verifying emails in bulk. It can be used in real-time and automatically check emails if configured properly for your website.
They’re so sure about their service that if more than 3% of the emails still don’t work after you use NeverBounce, they’ll give you monetary compensation.
Sending Services That Can Help Avoid Technical Spam Filters
A lot of technical aspects are involved when it comes to choosing sending services. Some maintain quality and are prioritized by email clients.
others may have allowed spammers to email using their services and have been blacklisted. Following are a few SMTP services you can consider going to.
i. Brevo (formerly SendinBlue)
Brevo is well-known as a SaaS email marketing tool, but you can also take their exclusive sending service without the expensive email marketing options.
You can get a free plan to send up to 300 emails per day through the Brevo sending service. For more, you have to subscribe to their paid options.
ii. MailChimp SMTP
MailChimp is the most popular email client but is not always considered the best for segmented email marketing.
However, their SMTP service is definitely something you can use without any doubt.
iii. MailerSend
MailerSend comes with great affordable options to use their SMTP service, starting with up to 50k emails per month for as low as $24.
Plus, they are well-optimized to avoid technical spam filters.
3 Reliable Email Marketing Tools to Create Optimized Email Marketing Campaigns
One of the crucial decisions to make is choosing the right email marketing tool.
Based on your requirements, you may want to look into features such as lead segmentation, easy campaign management, good email builder, optimized email protocols to avoid spam filters and email automation.
Following are a few email marketing automation tools you can consider using.
i. Mail Mint
If you are using a WordPress website, then Mail Mint is one of the best email marketing tools you can consider using.
Mail Mint is right now the easiest email marketing automation tool in WordPress, with crucial features such as lead management & segmentation, visual email builder, email sequences, automation workflows, abandoned cart recovery, and opt-in forms to collect leads.
It is optimized to help you collect and organize leads for targeted email campaigns. At the same time, you can also easily set up email automation based on several triggers in your WordPress site.
The best part about this tool is you will be able to start using it in a matter of minutes without any assistance required.
ii. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is quite popular for its amazing email automation control besides being a good email marketing tool.
It allows you to set up automation triggers in many situations such as email opened, product purchased, button clicked, form submitted, and many more.
This tool is considered one of the best for email automation flows and can be integrated with any type of website easily.
iii. HubSpot
Hubspot is an amazing all-in-one platform that comes with CRM, email marketing tools, automation workflows, lead forms, and many more.
It is a brilliant option for enterprise-level businesses and has everything you need to efficiently control email marketing and customer value journey (although on the expensive side).
Conclusion
In conclusion, tracking your email bounce rate is essential for improving your email marketing campaigns. A high bounce rate in email marketing can indicate issues like invalid or fake email addresses.
Regularly cleaning your list, using double opt-ins, and avoiding purchased lists help maintain an acceptable bounce rate and boost your email deliverability rates.
By monitoring key metrics and using tools like Mail Mint, you can automate and optimize your campaigns.
Mail Mint helps you manage your fresh email list. It also ensures your emails reach the right audience and keeps your bounce rates low for successful campaigns.
** FAQs **
Why is my Gmail bouncing?
- Your Gmail might bounce if the recipient’s inbox is full, the email address is incorrect, or the email server is busy. To avoid this, double-check the recipient’s address and make sure your email doesn’t exceed size limits.
Why is my email rejected?
- Your email can be rejected if it’s flagged as spam, the recipient’s server is blocking your domain, or the email address is invalid. Using an email validator and ensuring compliance with internet service providers’ rules can help reduce rejections.
How do I stop spam emails?
- You can stop spam emails by unsubscribing from unwanted lists, reporting spam to your email provider, and setting up spam filters in Gmail. Using double opt-in when signing up for services helps prevent spam.
Do blocked emails get bounced back?
- Yes, blocked emails often bounce back, meaning they don’t reach the recipient. The bounce rate will reflect this in your campaign monitor, especially if a large percentage of your sent emails are blocked.
How do I delete spam emails?
- To delete spam emails, go to your Gmail spam folder and select the emails you want to remove. You can also set up filters to automatically delete spam as it arrives, keeping your inbox clean.
