- What Are Email Bounces?Emails fail to reach recipients due to issues like invalid addresses (hard bounces) or temporary problems (soft bounces). Hard bounces must be removed immediately, while soft bounces require monitoring.
- Why It’s Important:High bounce rates hurt your sender reputation and lead to poor deliverability. Keep bounce rates under 2% to avoid being flagged by email providers.
- Key Practices to Improve Deliverability:
- Validate email lists regularly.
- Authenticate emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Remove invalid addresses after hard bounces.
- Monitor soft bounces and adjust your strategy.
- Bounce Management Tools:Use automation and email verification tools like DeBounce or EmailListVerify to clean your lists and reduce bounces.
Quick Tip: A clean email list and proper bounce handling can improve your deliverability rate to over 98%, ensuring your emails land in inboxes, not spam folders.
Why Do My Emails Bounce? Reduce Email Bounce Rate in 4 Ways
Types of Email Bounces
Understanding email bounces is key to addressing delivery problems and protecting your sender reputation.
Hard vs. Soft Bounces
Hard and soft bounces require different strategies for resolution:
Type | Soft Bounce | Hard Bounce |
Nature | Temporary delivery issue | Permanent delivery failure |
Causes | Full mailbox, server downtime, large email size | Invalid address, non-existent domain, blocking |
Resolution | May resolve on its own; retry possible | Remove from the list immediately |
Impact | Minor if resolved quickly | Severe if ignored |
Action | Monitor and adjust email content | Clean your email list promptly |
Email platforms handle these bounce types differently. For instance, Mailchimp allows up to 7 soft bounces for inactive subscribers and 15 for active ones before treating them as hard bounces . HubSpot, on the other hand, automatically excludes hard-bounced addresses from future campaigns but keeps soft-bounced ones eligible for later emails .
Why Emails Bounce
Bounces happen for a variety of reasons, typically grouped into technical issues and recipient-related problems:
Technical Issues:
- Server timeouts
- DNS misconfigurations
- Email size exceeding limits
- Network connectivity problems
Recipient-Related Problems:
- Full mailboxes
- Inactive or closed accounts
- Blocked sender domains
- Non-existent email addresses
"Hard bounces mean that a message cannot be delivered due to an unchanging, permanent reason. There is nothing you can do to fix it, it just isn't happening." - Sinch Mailgun Team
MailerLite data shows that successful campaigns maintain bounce rates below 2%, with their users averaging only 0.55% across industries . If your bounce rate exceeds 5%, it indicates serious deliverability problems that need immediate action .
Email error codes are also a helpful diagnostic tool. Codes starting with "4" usually indicate soft bounces, while those beginning with "5" point to hard bounces . These codes can speed up the troubleshooting process.
Bounce Management Benefits
Sender Reputation Management
Managing bounces effectively helps protect your sender reputation, which is crucial for ensuring emails land in recipients' inboxes. When bounce rates are kept low, email providers are more likely to trust your sending practices, improving deliverability.
Email providers have tightened their standards, often requiring spam complaint rates to stay below 0.3% for better deliverability . This makes staying on top of bounces more important than ever.
Here’s how you can manage bounces to maintain your sender reputation:
- Remove invalid addresses right after hard bounces occur.
- Track soft bounces to identify potential issues early.
- Validate email addresses at the point of collection to avoid errors.
- Keep your list updated, as email lists can decay by 20-30% each year .
"Bounced emails aren't just an inconvenience; they can drag down your sender reputation if you're not managing them." - mailreach.co
By managing bounces well, you not only protect your reputation but also improve overall email performance.
Email Performance Metrics
A strong sender reputation and lower bounce rates directly impact your email campaign’s success. The table below highlights key industry benchmarks and how bounce management plays a role:
Metric | Industry Average | Good Performance Range | Impact of Bounce Management |
Open Rate | 21.5% | 17-28% | Better inbox placement improves visibility. |
Click-Through Rate (CTR) | 2.3% | 2-5% | Cleaner lists lead to higher engagement rates. |
Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) | 10.5% | 6-17% | Accurate targeting increases response rates. |
When bounce rates drop, these metrics often improve. Why? Fewer bounces mean better inbox placement, more precise targeting, lower costs, and cleaner data for analysis .
To keep benefiting from these improvements, it’s essential to monitor bounce rates regularly and act quickly when issues arise. Frequent bounces signal poor list quality to email service providers , so maintaining strict bounce management practices is key to protecting your reputation and achieving better campaign results.
Bounce Management Steps
Managing bounces effectively is key to maintaining strong email deliverability. Here’s how to approach it step by step.
Automated Bounce Handling
Using automation to process bounces is faster and more accurate than manual methods. Here are three common ways to automate this process:
- POP3 Email Scanning
- Monitors a designated bounce email account
- Identifies and categorizes bounce types
- Updates subscriber statuses
- Removes invalid email addresses
- Email Piping
- Forwards bounced emails to scripts for real-time processing
- Instantly updates your email list based on bounce data
- Return Path Management
- Ensures bounce tracking is accurate with proper configuration
- Helps keep bounce rates below 5%, avoiding issues with providers like Amazon SES
By automating bounce handling, you can focus on other areas of your email strategy while ensuring your list stays clean.
Email List Maintenance
A clean email list is just as important as handling bounces. Regular maintenance helps improve deliverability and engagement. Here’s what to do:
- Remove invalid and duplicate email addresses
- Monitor engagement and remove inactive subscribers
- Use scoring systems to evaluate subscriber activity
- Validate email addresses before adding them to your database
To take it a step further:
- Run reactivation campaigns to try and engage inactive users before removing them
- Use validation tools during the signup process
- Keep an eye on engagement metrics to identify trends
A double opt-in process can add an extra layer of quality control to your list.
Double Opt-In Process
Double opt-in ensures better subscriber quality by requiring users to verify their email addresses. This process often leads to higher engagement, with welcome emails achieving open rates over 83% and click-through rates around 16% .
"Email list management is an essential part of any email marketing strategy. And with it, you will increase your ROI and improve your contact list quality over its quantity." - GetResponse
Here’s how it works:
- Users submit their email address through a signup form
- A verification email is sent with a confirmation link
- Once confirmed, a welcome message is delivered
- Details about the subscription are outlined
- Footer reminders reinforce permission-based communication
This method not only improves the quality of your subscribers but also helps maintain strong deliverability rates.
Bounce Management Solutions
Managing email bounces effectively requires reliable tools and services designed to improve email deliverability.
Artemis Leads
Artemis Leads specializes in improving B2B email deliverability through a mix of advanced infrastructure, bounce management, and multi-channel outreach. Their services include:
- Email authentication to ensure secure and verified communication
- Inbox warm-up sequences to gradually build sender reputation
- Multi-channel outreach to diversify engagement strategies
- Ongoing deliverability monitoring to track and improve performance
Clients benefit from dedicated account managers who conduct bi-weekly check-ins to review bounce metrics and fine-tune strategies. For additional support, Artemis Leads also offers standalone email verification tools to improve the quality of email lists.
Email Verification Tools
Top-notch email verification tools help reduce bounce rates and safeguard sender reputation. Here's a comparison of some popular options:
Tool | Accuracy Rate | Processing Speed | Cost per 1,000 Emails |
ZoomInfo | 99.9% | 25,000/min | Custom pricing |
Emailable | 99% | 30,000/min | Custom pricing |
Bouncer | 99% | 20,000/min | $8.00 |
DeBounce | 98% | 15,000/min | $2.00 |
EmailListVerify | 98% | 10,000/min | $3.60 |
These tools offer several key features:
- Real-time verification: Instantly identifies typos, validates domains and syntax, and blocks invalid entries at the point of signup.
- Bulk list cleaning: Processes large email lists, removes invalid addresses and spam traps, and delivers detailed reports on list quality.
- API integration: Connects easily with existing platforms, automates verification tasks, and ensures ongoing list hygiene.
For best results, verification should be implemented at these stages:
- Point of Entry: Validate emails during form submissions to catch errors early.
- Regular Maintenance: Clean your email lists every quarter to maintain quality.
- Pre-Campaign: Verify email segments before launching major campaigns.
Most tools offer flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing. For example, DeBounce charges $10 for 5,000 verifications, while MillionVerifier provides 10,000 credits for $37 . Consistently using these tools helps maintain deliverability rates above 98% and protects your sender reputation .
Summary
Managing email bounces effectively is key to maintaining strong deliverability and successful campaigns. According to industry data, normal bounce rates are typically under 2% . Companies like FulcrumTech have achieved bounce rates of less than 1% by using tested strategies .
Here’s how bounce management helps protect your sender reputation:
- Authentication and Verification: Proper email authentication reassures inbox providers that your emails are legitimate, lowering the chances of being marked as spam.
- List Quality Management: Keeping your email list clean is essential. Removing invalid addresses from hard bounces and keeping an eye on soft bounces helps maintain deliverability rates, often exceeding 97% .
- Proactive Monitoring: Spotting bounce patterns early prevents harm to your sender reputation.