7 Ways to Reduce Email Bounce Rate

Table of Contents

Email marketing is still relevant for businesses today.

When done correctly, it can help you connect with your target audience in a more personalized way and increase engagement and revenue. However, this form of marketing is a vast discipline.

Running a quality email campaign can take a lot of hard work. Just imagine the disappointment that other marketers felt when they hit the send button only to find that some of their audience didn’t even receive their email.

Sure, email bounces are an inevitable part of your campaign. It happens as some people on your list may change their email addresses. Still, you have the power to reduce the email bounce rate.

Below, we share with you some tips and tricks to reduce bounce rates to actually generate ROI from your email marketing campaigns. But before that, let’s find out…

What is Email Bounce Rate and Why Emails Bounce

Email bounce rate refers to the percentage of emails that don’t send or bounce back to you. Having a lower bounce rate is better because it means more emails are landing in your recipients’ inboxes.

Hard vs. Soft Bounces

A hard bounce means that the email cannot be permanently delivered. Often, this requires that you clean the bounced email addresses immediately. On the other hand, soft bounces indicate a temporary delivery issue, such as when the recipient email server is offline or the email message is too large.

Generally, 2% or less is a good email bounce rate. This means that if you are sending 100 emails, having 2 or fewer bounce rates is accepted. If the bounce rate is above that, it means you should take some action to improve your email marketing campaigns.

The day you send your campaign, the industry you’re in, and the time of day have an impact.

Why Emails Bounce

Here are some reasons why emails bounce

The recipient email address does not exist
The recipient email server has blocked delivery
Email is blocked due to content
The email message is too large
Spammy content
Sending through an IP with a bad reputation
Nonexistent domain name

7 Ways to Lower Your Email Bounce Rate

1. Keep Your Email List Clean

If you want to stay fit, you’ve got to keep moving. The same applies to your email marketing list. So, if you want to keep your list healthy, you need to put some effort into it.

This means regular cleanup of your email databases as people get fired, hired, or move on to new challenges. If your list gets out of date, you will begin to see bounces.

If you are sending them emails once a week, for instance, and some have not opened for a couple of months, it’s already a good time to remove them from your list. And if the email bounces, you can remove it automatically.

2. Authenticate Your Domain

Email authentication is the key to improve your email deliverability and prevent email fraud. By putting up SPF and DKIM records in place, you are also protecting your brand and helping your emails reach the inbox successfully.

Authenticating your sending domain lowers the odds that your domain will be spoofed or used for phishing attacks. It will also have a positive impact on your sender reputation and email deliverability rates, which ultimately lowers the email bounce rate of your campaigns.

A good email service provider (ESP) may help you verify or authenticate your domain.

3. Get Subscribers to Double Opt-In

A double opt-in also called confirmed opt-in, happens when a person signs up for an email marketing list and an email will be sent out to that person, which includes a link for them to confirm their subscription.

Getting your subscribers to confirm their email addresses means that fewer people will put in false emails. As a result, you won’t be sending your newsletters to inactive accounts.

4. Avoid Alerting the Spam Filter

Marketing emails should be captivating and thoughtful. Statistics show that more than 53% of emails globally are sent as spam. Although your emails do not fall into such a percentage, email providers now use some key qualifiers to identify spam and your campaign may be unconsciously falling to those qualifiers.

To prevent emails from going to spam, make sure that your content is not spammy. We suggest that you check for formatting problems and broken images. Avoid using words that are commonly used in spam, like “act now!” “free,” “cash bonus,” and “100% satisfied.”

5. Segment Your List

Personalized emails work six times better than generic emails. The reason is simple: people love a personal touch.

This is why you should segment your list to offer more targeted campaigns. It means your subscribers are receiving only information that they need and want.

Segmenting your email list by engagement is one of the best practices for businesses. In this case, you find out which contacts had the highest email engagement rates in your past campaigns and send your future emails to these subscribers first.

6. Use a Reputable ESP

There’s nothing bad in using free domains, such as Google’s Gmail but it does not send the best message to your potential customers.

Using a reputable email service provider, on the other hand, provides your business the benefit of having a well-established and trusted email service that leads to a better email delivery rate. You can even utilize your domain name, adding credibility to your business.

7. Give Your Subscribers Control

As a marketer, the type of email content that you can send to your subscribers varies. You can send them announcements, offers, events, tutorials, and more!

By giving your subscribers control of the type of email marketing content they find relevant, you are increasing the chances that they will be engaged for a longer period.

Wrap Up

Wrap Up Here’s the bottom line: email bounce rate does not have to be a head-scratcher. By following the steps given above, you can surely fine-tune your campaigns and achieve better deliverability.

And even if your email bounce rate is now healthy, we hope you find something to take away from this article, like what mistakes to avoid that could hurt your metrics.

We wish you good luck in all your marketing efforts.

Author Profile

Christy Bella: Blogger by Passion | Contributor to many Business Blogs in the United Kingdom | Fascinated to Write Blogs in Business & Startup Niches |