In email marketing server, a very important aspect is the email bounce rate. A high bounce rate can show that you have issues with your lists or with how you are sending emails and this will negatively affect your sender reputation and thence away from your email marketing targets.
In this article, we focus on explaining what email bounce rate means, why it is important, and ways to optimize your bounce rate.
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What is the Email Bounce Rate?
Email bounce rate is the percentage of the total mail sent in a campaign that bounces, meaning could not be delivered to the recipient’s mailbox. Whenever an email bounces it means that the message failed to pass through the recipient’s mail server to his or her mailbox. The higher the bounce rate, the fewer the chances of getting your intended message to the recipients effectively.
Types of Bounces
Not all bounces are the same. They can generally be classified into two main categories:
Soft Bounce: Temporary problems lead to soft bounces. Possible reasons can be when the inbox is full, server malfunction, or the size of the email files is too large. The primary category of bounces that may be overcome is soft bounces can be often solved, as the email server might try again.
Hard Bounce: If the delivery is permanent, then it leads to a hard bounce. These are usually generated by wrong or non-existent email addresses. Hard bounces should also be addressed immediately as trying to send emails to those invalid addresses is counterproductive and will further reduce your sender’s reputation.
Why is the Bounce Rate of Emails Significant?
A high bounce rate may mean that there is a problem with the quality of the subscribers’ list or with the approaches you take while marketing. Here’s why it’s essential to keep it low:
- Improved Deliverability: ISPs monitor bounce rates. When you get a high bounce rate, then your ISPs can relegate your emails as spam, and this hinders your future deliverability.
- Enhanced Sender Reputation: Hard bounces that occur multiple times hurt your sender credentials, diminishing the prospects of email deliverance.
- Reduced Costs: Some email Service Providers have rated their services in terms of deliverability rates and are billed accordingly. Lower bounce rates therefore suggest that the impact of your budget has been optimized.
Calculating Email Bounce Rate
The formula for calculating the email bounce rate is straightforward:
If you sent 1,000 emails and 50 of them bounced, your bounce rate would be 5%.
What is a Good Email Bounce Rate?
The benchmark bounce rate varies by industry and list quality. However, a bounce rate under 2% is generally considered healthy. If your bounce rate exceeds 5%, it’s a sign that list hygiene or sending practices need attention.
Common Causes of High Email Bounce Rates
Several factors contribute to a high bounce rate:
- Poor Email List Quality: Old, outdated, or purchased email lists often have high bounce rates.
- Invalid Email Addresses: Typos, inactive accounts, or closed domains can lead to hard bounces.
- List Fatigue: Infrequent or inconsistent sending can lead to inactive or outdated email addresses.
- Poor List Segmentation: Sending irrelevant content can lead to users unsubscribing or marking emails as spam, indirectly affecting bounce rates.
- Content or Spam Triggers: Emails containing spam-like content can trigger spam filters, leading to bounces.
Best Practices for Minimising the Bounce Rate on Emails
Regularly Clean Your Email List: Delete invalid or anomalous email records or alter them to more recent and more exact data. Most of the email marketing solutions available present ways to quickly locate old contacts or email addresses that hard bounce.
Use Double Opt-In: This translates to the fact that when you make people confirm their subscriptions, there is a big chance that in the future they will not bounce.
Avoid Purchased Lists: This is considered one of the best ways of making your list grow faster but it has been found that the majority of the lists you obtain here have poor-quality contacts or those that are redundant and can lead to a high bounce rate.
Monitor Engagement Rates: Delete those customers who did not interact with your emails within the specified time, like 180 days, and can be considered non-interested.
Authenticate Your Domain: This then helps your domain reputation and reduces the tendency of your emails to be blacklisted.
Optimize Email Sending Frequency: By being consistent, you keep your list active and up to date since they are always reminded of your existence. Sending of large mailings to cold lists can lead to high bounce rates, especially where the cont Activate contact records after one month of non-contact to ensure that the systems do not accumulate inactive contacts.
Warm-Up New IPs or Domains: Pay particular attention to the IP or domain that you are, starting with a low sending rate for fresh IPs or domains. This process of warm-up procedure is beneficial to build good relations with the ISPs.
Run a Pre-Delivery List Verification Check: To do this one can use ZeroBounce, NeverBounce BriteVerify, and others to identify and filter out bad addresses before starting a campaign.
Measures to Track and Minimise Bounce Rate
Several tools and platforms provide insights into your bounce rate and can assist in list management:
- Email Verification Services: A special type of service like ZeroBounce, Hunter, or NeverBounce can be used before adding details to the list to confirm emails.
- Email Marketing Platforms: Services like iDealSMTP, SMTPget, and SMTPmart have integrated tools for reports and tips on how to increase or decrease your bounce rates.
Advanced Techniques to Reduce and Manage Bounce Rates
For those who have implemented basic strategies but still encounter issues, here are some advanced tactics:
- Implement List Segmentation Based on Engagement: Instead of making a unified email shot try dividing the entire list based on the level of engagement. For instance, divide people into groups engaged with your messages frequently, by only opening them, and people who have not opened any messages for quite a while. Specifically, if you are sending to highly engaged contacts your deliverability rate will increase because ISPs will trust the messages being sent to active users more.
- Run a Re-Engagement Campaign: That is why before completely deleting inactive subscribers, try to use them in re-engagement campaigns. One has to send several emails without considering their interests stating that something is interesting to catch their attention. If they continue not to respond it may be wise to delete them from your list.
- Customize and Localize Content: Subscribers may ‘deselect’ by being too unmatched for relevance. Preventing the delivery of messages at night and targeting them to preferred time zones, language, or geographic locations, while delivering messages and information can help minimize the number of users who unsubscribe to such message notifications and increase the open rates. For instance, if you are sending emails to customers in different companies in different countries, better avoid sending the emails at certain times since they may bounce.
- Use Advanced Authentication (DMARC, BIMI): DMARC stresses, reconciles, and improves your domain’s authenticity by linking SPF and DKIM records. Furthermore, you can use BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) which can place your brand logo right in the message, which increases its credibility.
- Monitor ISP Feedback Loops: Some ISPs have feedback loops (FBLs), where you can get information that certain users have flagged your emails as spam. When you look at these reports, you may note trends or realize that a particular user has no interest in the emails you are sending out, and alter your content or segregate your list correspondingly.
- Ensure Email Content Quality and Relevance: Ant spam services and programs can work not only with email addresses but also with the context of the messages. Do not use multiple exclamation marks abusive calls to action, or multiple links as this may be interpreted by the spam filter. Whenever possible, avoid the use of generic email sending in provider-generic options to diminish the capability of being spammed.
How Bounce Rates Affect Overall Marketing Success
A high bounce rate doesn’t just impact individual email campaigns; it can have long-term effects on your entire email marketing program:
Lower Overall ROI: So when deliverability is low the reach of your campaigns drops, as does engagement, conversions, and finally, the ROI.
Damage to Brand Reputation: High bounce rates are an indication of poor list hygiene or send practices which makes your emails appear untrustworthy to potential customers as well as ISPs.
ISP Blacklisting Risks: If your bounce rate remains high it is irritating to the ISPs and may well result that the receiver does not see your emails even if they would be interested in it.
Higher Costs for Email Services: Your email providers may be charging more for every bounce if you are sending to the wrong addresses or dead list subscribers. By keeping bounces low, you make certain each sent e-mail is useful and worthy of the investment.
Email Bounce Rate Benchmarks by Industry
This is because industries have their standards set by their target market and level of interaction with the adverts being placed. Here are some general benchmarks for email bounce rates across industries:
- Retail & E-commerce: < 1% (bounce rates here tend to be very low as most subscribers are actively engaging with the brand)
- Financial Services: < 2%
- Nonprofits: 1-3%
- Technology: 1-2%
- Media & Entertainment: < 1.5%
Conclusion
It is known that the problem of managing and minimizing email bounce rates is crucial for successful email marketing. The basics of list hygiene, appealing content, and a strong willingness to constantly oversee your delivery practices. A low bounce rate benefits email campaigns because more target users are reached, rather than being sent to deleted senders list, improving results.
Good email marketing also depends on whom and how often one targets concerning correspondingly continuing to be important to the recipient. A low percentage of website bounces will mean you always have a steady funneled way of connecting better with your audience as well as realizing your marketing objectives.
