How to Get the Email Bounce Rate Under Control
You invest a significant amount of time and effort into crafting different types of email campaigns, but as soon as you hit send, they briefly interact with the recipient’s email server and then return to haunt you.
So frustrating, right?
Especially when you discover that 77% of marketers are successfully achieving high email engagement rates. This blows your mind, and you start wondering what you’re doing wrong and why you’re falling behind.
The good news is there’s a solution to your problem. To do that, you need to thoroughly understand the email bounce rate, work on analyzing your email campaign metrics and KPIs, and consistently refine your email list in a timely manner.
The quickest and most effective way to achieve this is by employing an efficient, versatile, and reliable email service provider (ESP).
Campaign Refinery can expertly accomplish that for you. We’ll talk about it in detail.
But first, let’s delve into why emails bounce in the first place and what the necessary steps are to reduce your email marketing bounce rate.
What is Email Bounce Rate?
The official bounce rate email marketing definition is: The percentage of emails sent that are not successfully delivered to recipients.
It’s something you won’t wish to go high.
What happens is when you send an email and instead of landing in the email marketing subscriber’s inbox, it returns to you due to some error. This occurrence is called an email bounce because the email has bounced back to the sender (you).
It’s a common issue in email marketing. With 347.3 billion emails sent every day, 15.8% of them never reach their intended destination. Some end up in the spam folder, while others return to the sender.
This can significantly hinder business growth.
To ward it off, businesses often track the email bounce rate, which is the percentage of the emails that are tossed back to senders by the recipient’s email server.
This helps companies discover how many customers they are able to reach and how many they are failing to deliver to.
Some businesses, particularly those in industries like legal, tend to overlook minor variations when their bounce rate hovers around 15.69%, as it aligns with their industry standards. However, in retail email marketing, senders tend to react more strongly to this rate, considering it to be relatively high within their industry.
Depending on the average bounce rate of their industry, marketers take measures to improve it. No matter how high their email bounce rate is, they work diligently to reduce it. This dedication stems from their awareness of the substantial ROI that email marketing can yield, thereby augmenting their profits.
To streamline the optimization of email campaign bounce rates, professional email marketers have categorized bounced emails into different groups.
Types of Bounces
Understanding the types of bounced emails is crucial for businesses to uncover the reasons behind their occurrence.
Marketers can then analyze these causes and implement the necessary measures to prevent them from bouncing.
There are essentially two primary types of email bounces:
- Hard Bounce: This type of bounced email occurs when the emails you’ve sent either can’t find the recipients’ email addresses or are directly rejected by the recipient’s mail servers. In both cases, there’s little you can do. These are permanent errors that are extremely challenging and almost impossible to resolve by the sender.
- Soft Bounce: In this case, your emails reach the recipient’s email addresses, but they are returned to you due to temporary errors in their email servers or your emails themselves. These issues can usually be rectified and sometimes even resolved on their own.
Both hard and soft bounces occur due to their own distinct reasons, which you should be aware of in order to identify the types and initiate the improvement process.
Causes of Hard Bouncing
Hard bounces typically occur due to:
- The email address you’re trying to reach doesn’t exist;
- The receiver’s email domain name has expired;
- The Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) has been blocked, preventing the recipient from receiving emails from anyone.
Causes of Soft Bouncing
Soft bounces usually happen because of the below reasons:
- The receiver’s email server is temporarily down or dysfunctional;
- The recipient has exceeded their email storage limit and can’t receive more emails;
- The email you’re trying to send exceeds the email size limit set by the receiver’s ESP;
- Your emails are being blocked due to a poor email sender reputation.
Once you are familiar with the types of email bounces and why they occur, you can calculate the email bounce rate unerringly. Let’s now see how to do that.
How to Calculate Email Marketing Bounce Rate
You first need to determine the exact number of emails that didn’t land in the receivers’ inboxes and instead bounced back to you. Don’t be indolent and make assumptions.
You must diligently track, maintain, and analyze accurate records of your email campaign metrics to obtain the actual email bounce number.
Once you have a system in place to track email metrics, you can calculate the bounce rate of your email campaign using the following three steps.
- Note down the exact number of bounced emails,
- Divide that number by the exact number of emails sent,
- Multiply the result of the division by 100 to obtain the percentage.
This percentage will represent your precise email bounce rate.
Let’s say you send a total of 100 emails in a month, and 10 of them bounce; the email bounce rate formula would look like this:
Bounce rate formula in email marketing:
Number of emails bounced / Number of emails sent x 100 = email bounce rate.
10 /100 x 100 = 10%
Now, use this formula to determine your precise rate.
Hard Bounce Rate Formula
The hard bounce rate formula calculates the percentage of emails from a specific campaign that couldn’t be delivered due to permanent failures.
Tracking this metric helps you understand the proportion of invalid or non-existent email addresses targeted in your send, directly reflecting list quality.
The formula is:
Hard Bounce Rate = (Number of Hard Bounces ÷ Total Number of Emails Sent) × 100
What is the Average Bounce Rate for Email Campaigns?
The average email bounce rate can vary significantly depending on the industry you operate in.
Here’s a breakdown of average bounce rates across different sectors, using data from ZeroBounce:
| Industry | Average Bounce Rate (%) |
|---|---|
| E-commerce | 0.57 |
| Retail | 0.62 |
| Non-profits | 0.8 |
| Real Estate | 0.97 |
| Travel and Transportation | 1.02 |
| Mobile Space | 1.07 |
| Education and Training | 1.3 |
| Marketing and Advertising | 1.33 |
| Computers and Electronics | 1.4 |
But what if you consider ignoring the bounce rate and taking no action to reduce it? In that case, what will happen to your business? Let’s find out.
How High Bounce Rate in Email Marketing Jeopardizes Business
It operates like a malignant force. When preventive measures are not taken promptly to address the rising email bounce rate, it gradually undermines the entire marketing campaign, leading to stagnation in business growth followed by a significant decline.
The following points will provide you with a glimpse of how detrimental a high email bounce rate can be for your business:
- It squanders both time and resources in attempts to reach clients who will never respond;
- You’ll incur significant email marketing costs without yielding any results, particularly if you’ve employed an ESP with flat-rate pricing;
- You will always be at risk of having your emails marked as spam, which will eventually harm your business’s reputation;
- You may inadvertently contact individuals who have no interest in receiving your emails, which could lead them to mark you as spam, potentially blacklisting you and affecting your communication with other customers.
So, before you learn how to control your bounce rate, it’s important to understand why it happens in the first place.
5 Email Marketing Blunders That Lead to High Email Bounce Rate
Marketers frequently explore different strategies to expand their customer base, and at times, inexperienced marketers implement methods they believe will attract more clients. However, these pyrrhic victories backfire in the long run.
Here are five significant factors responsible for email bounces:
- Never Asking for Permission: Deceiving people into sharing their email addresses and then commencing sending them emails.
- Hiding the Unsubscribe Option: This makes it extremely challenging for subscribers to opt out and modify their permission settings.
- Using Unverified Domains: Neglecting efforts to improve the sender’s reputation, resulting in their emails being flagged as spam due to poor email authentication.
- Sending Unrelated Emails: Inundating subscribers with messages that have no relevance causes recipients to categorize these messages as spam.
- Sending Emails from Unprofessional and Dubious Domains: Utilizing suspicious or freebie domains to dispatch sales and marketing messages, which inevitably fosters distrust among recipients.
While it may not be possible to reduce your email bounce rate to 0%, avoiding these errors can make most of your email bounce issues disappear into thin air.
Now, the question is, what bounce rate should marketers target that would make them feel their email campaign is performing effectively? Or, what is an acceptable bounce rate for emails?
Is There an Acceptable Bounce Rate Email Marketing?
Well, you could say that.
However, you can’t simply pick a number from any industry and assume that achieving that specific bounce rate will signify that your email marketing campaign is performing at its peak. It doesn’t work that way.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every industry has a different average bounce rate, and these numbers vary significantly from one industry to another.
For example, the manufacturing industry typically maintains an average bounce rate of 14.83%, whereas dining & food services boast a lower rate of 9.26%. These figures represent the average bounce rates for THEIR respective industries.
Now, you need to determine the average bounce rate for your industry and consider setting that number as your threshold. However, always aim to reduce it further.
Related Reading
Enjoying this guide? Check out related topics from our blog:
- Queued Email: The Reasons Behind Delayed Delivery
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- What is SSL Email Protocol and Its Role in Email Security
- How Can Email Deliverability Test Boost Your Marketing Campaigns
- Email Deliverability Services: Features, Benefits, and How to Choose
- Unsubscribing Made Easy: Understanding Email Unsubscribe Law Canons
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- How to Make Money From Your Email List: 13 Proven Strategies for 2024
- Email Security 101: How to Add Email to Safe Sender List
- HTML vs Plain Text Email: Making the Right Choice for Your Campaigns
Want to know what is a good bounce rate for email? Keep reading.
What is a Good Email Bounce Rate?
A good email bounce rate is generally considered to be under 0.5%.
This low percentage signifies excellent list health, effective validation processes, and strong deliverability. While the acceptable email bounce rate can go up to 2%, consistently achieving below 0.5% indicates highly effective list management practices.
Curious about the average bounce rate email marketers target? More on this below.
Email Bounce Rate Benchmarks
Understanding your bounce rate is one thing, but knowing whether it’s good or bad requires context. The following table provides general benchmarks to help you gauge your email list health and deliverability performance.
| Benchmark Category | Bounce Rate Range | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Good / Excellent | Under 0.5% | This indicates very healthy list hygiene, effective list acquisition methods, and strong deliverability practices. |
| Average / Acceptable | 0.5% to 2% | Here’s a common range for many well-maintained lists and industries. This is generally acceptable, but always monitor trends. |
| Poor / Needs Attention | Above 2% | These numbers suggest potential problems with list quality, data entry errors, lack of validation, or possible blocklisting/reputation issues. |
A lower email bounce rate reflects the efficiency of your email marketing campaign, signifying that your emails are successfully reaching your target audience.
Email Bounce Rate Calculator
If you’re searching for an “Email Bounce Rate Calculator,” the good news is that the calculation is straightforward enough that you don’t need a special online tool. Your email marketing platform typically provides the key numbers — total emails sent and total bounces — directly in your campaign reports.
To calculate your email marketing bounce rate for any given campaign, simply use the following formula:
Remember, the “Total Number of Bounces” figure usually includes both hard bounces and soft bounces reported for that specific email campaign.
Now, let’s get your hands on the strategies for getting those bounce rates down.
What Bounce Rate Newsletter Should Achieve
For a newsletter sent to opted-in subscribers, the target bounce rate should generally be low, reflecting good list health and engagement. Aim to keep your newsletter bounce rate consistently under 1%.
Achieving under 0.5% signifies excellent email list hygiene, while rates persistently above 2% likely warrant investigation into your list management and email validation practices.
Below, we share ways to help you reduce your email bounce rate.
How to Reduce Email Bounce Rate
No matter what you do, there will always be some emails that bounce. All we can do is strive to bring the bounce rate as low as possible.
These four tips will certainly assist you in achieving that:
- Double Opt-in Method: Make sure the recipients have opted in to receive emails from you by asking them for permission. Twice, using the double opt-in method.
- Valuable Content: Always deliver useful and relatable email content to your subscribers to which they feel connected;
- Authentication: Make sure to authenticate your domain using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols. If these protocols don’t recognize your server, they may flag your emails as threats and place them in the spam folder;
- Clean Email List: You should refine your email list periodically and segment recipients based on their preferences. This will enable you to send mass personalized emails which always have higher chances of making a receiver respond.
After years of experience, experimentation, and analysis, we have discovered that maintaining a clean email list is one of the crucial factors in preserving sender reputation and minimizing bounce rates.
That’s precisely why Campaign Refinery has designed and integrated a built-in list-cleaning tool within the platform.
Our automated list-cleaning tool efficiently handles both hard and soft bounces, ensuring your emails successfully reach your target audience’s inboxes. Additionally, it identifies and eliminates inactive subscribers. We achieve these results consistently for every client through our advanced deliverability technology, which has significantly improved deliverability and open rates for our clients.
This will effectively mitigate most of the challenges associated with bounce rates; then you can tackle the common issues with ease.
How to Manage Email Bounce Rates
Here are the solutions to common problems you might encounter when trying to reduce the bounce rate of your emails:
| Problem ❌ | Solution ✅ |
|---|---|
| Low open rate | Update your list |
| Email address not found | Remove the address immediately |
| Recipient’s server is down | Try sending again later |
| Oversize email | The recipient’s server is down |
| Landing in spam | Improve sender reputation |
One additional tip we’d like to share is to send emails on Tuesdays.
Research has shown that most email users are more likely to read marketing emails on this day. Also, it’s essential not to overwhelm them with emails every day; sending once or twice a week is sufficient.
Now that you’ve learned everything from calculating the email bounce rate to the steps you should take to achieve a better bounce rate, it’s time to put all that knowledge into action.
Asking yourself, how to reduce my email campaign bounce rate? We answer this below.
How Can I Reduce My Email Campaign Bounce Rate?
Now you’re aware of how bad bounce rate email campaign numbers can be — how do you improve the numbers if you’re in the deep end?
Best practices are key to minimizing these bounces.
Along with the suggestions in the previous section, here are additional tips to help you reduce your email campaign bounce rate:
- Avoid Purchased or Rented Lists: These lists often contain outdated or invalid email addresses and spam traps, leading to high bounce rates and email deliverability issues. Focus on growing your email list organically.
- Validate Emails at Signup: Use real-time checks on your subscription forms to catch obvious typos or improperly formatted addresses before they’re added.
- Manage Inactive Subscribers: Regularly identify subscribers who haven’t engaged in a long time. Attempt re-engagement email campaigns, and remove those who remain unresponsive.
- Monitor Soft Bounces: While occasional soft bounces are normal, track addresses that consistently soft bounce across multiple campaigns, as they may be abandoned. Consider removing them.
- Maintain Sending Consistency: Avoid drastic changes in sending volume or frequency, especially after long periods of inactivity, as this can look suspicious to email providers.
It’s a lot to handle, right? But what if we tell you that you can automate most of this?
Why Campaign Refinery is the Most Effective ESP for Reducing Email Bounce Rate
Campaign Refinery is a premium email marketing software specifically designed to serve businesses intending to send millions of emails to their subscribers every month.
Our expert team provides comprehensive assistance in authenticating clients’ domains, resulting in a significant improvement in their deliverability rates.
Our clients have experienced an average 37% increase in their open rates shortly after selecting Campaign Refinery as their email service partner.
Leaning on decades of experience, our founder, Travis Ketchum, dedicated years to creating the best email marketing software available, but he also loves to share knowledge. We would like to offer you The Inbox Formula, a guide he wrote packed with nifty techniques we use daily to dramatically increase our clients’ open and click rates by as much as 6x.
Learn how you can get your deliverability where you need it to be using The Inbox Formula!
Campaign Refinery offers custom solutions to businesses who want to make their email marketing soar.
Check out our pricing and apply to explore our services and become an exclusive member of our community!
And feel free to share how our resources assisted you in reducing your email bounce rate!
FAQ
Is There an Email Bounce Rate Calculation?
Yes, bounce rate email marketing is determined by dividing the total number of bounced emails by the total number of emails sent for a specific campaign, then multiplying by 100 to express it as a percentage.
What is a High Email Bounce Rate?
An email bounce rate is generally considered high if it consistently goes above 2%
