For an average user, this number means nothing. However, this number makes a huge difference for a company that relies on email marketing to drive leads.
A bounced email can be why your emails disappear, lowering the performance of your email campaigns.
If you are here to find the answer, keep reading the article. We will share helpful ways to resolve and avoid the bounced email issue and drive your campaigns to better results.
What is a Bounced Email?
Let’s start from the basics: exploring the meaning of a bounced email.
A bounced email is a message that fails to reach the recipient’s inbox and is returned to the sender.
You can see an example of an email bounce-back message in the screenshot. It typically comes with a code and an explanation of why you have a bounced email.
One or two bounced emails are pretty standard. However, the increased number is something that you have to consider and put a lot of effort into reducing.
Now, let’s learn what counts as a high email bounce rate.
What is a High Email Bounce Rate?
The email bounce rate refers to the percentage of undelivered messages during one email campaign. In other words, it is the number of emails that didn’t reach the receiver from the email list.
Typically, 2% or less is a reasonable email bounce rate. You have a list of 300 emails; the optimal number of bounced emails should be no more than 6. If the number of bounced emails exceeds 6, your email campaign will suffer.
Speaking of email campaign success, let’s move to the next part to understand why you should pay attention to your email bounce rates.
Why Should You Care About Email Bounce Rate?
Email providers collect information regarding your bounce rate. Based on this information, they choose whether or not to accept emails from you. For email providers, a high bounce rate becomes a red flag, and they may decide not to accept emails from your address – something you should avoid at all costs.
If you don’t track and fix a bounced email on time, it can lead to
- Damaged sender reputation: ESPs view a high bounce rate as a sign that you may be a suspicious email sender. Based on that, they may automatically move your emails to the recipient’s spam folder, damaging your sender reputation.
- Low email deliverability rate: A high bounce rate also affects your email deliverability. This means that most of your emails don’t reach their intended recipients, reducing the effectiveness of your outreach campaigns.
- Financial loss: Estimations reveal that mid-sized companies spend $51 – $1000 on email marketing. In business, every investment has to count, so if emails fail lef due to a high bounce rate, then all the money will be spent on nothing.
To understand how to reduce your email bounce rate, it’s essential first to learn how to calculate it accurately.
What is a Hard Bounce?
A hard bounce happens when an email fails to get delivered for permanent reasons. This means that your email won’t get delivered, and you’ll need to find other ways to reach out to your recipients.
Below, you can find some of the common reasons for hard bounced email.
- Invalid or Non-Existent Email Addresses
A non-existent email address is one that is not used anymore. This can be caused by the user changing the domain of the email or deleting the email altogether. If you continue emailing them, you will increase the number of emails bouncing back.
- Email Typos
Email typos are the following common issue. Typos are any kind of grammatical mistakes or misspellings. It’s a human error. These errors can be in the email address, too.
They mainly occur during the email collection process. Users can enter their names incorrectly when filling out a sign-in or newsletter subscription form.
For example, one of the users can fill out [email protected] instead of [email protected], and you may not even notice this. But the ESP will, and the email address with just one typo will become bounced.
- Poor Email Authentication
Email authentication is the process of setting up email verification protocols, which are Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC).
These protocols are enacted to prove to the ESP that the email sender’s address is legitimate.
Email systems try to protect their users from spammy and suspicious messages. If you have poor email authentication, there is a risk of your email being considered to be sharing suspicious content, and the email providers can place your emails in spam folders or not deliver them. Thus, you will have a hard bounced email.
So, ensure you have proper email authentication to ensure your email campaigns run smoothly.
But these were only the hard bounced emails, and we still have soft bounced emails and are starting to explore why would an email bounce. So, let’s see what they have in store.
What is a Soft Bounce?
So, what is the soft bounce in email marketing? The issues resulting in soft bounces are temporary and more accessible to fix. Plus, you can resend them within 24 hours.
If you fail to address soft bounced emails promptly over time, they will turn into hard bounces. Knowing the reasons contributing to soft bounces can help you maintain them at a low level.
So, what causes a soft bounce?
- Temporary Server Error
Temporary server errors are one of the reasons for soft bounces.
When a receiver’s email service experiences a temporary outage or other technical issues, it can lead to a temporary server error. The issues make the recipient’s inbox unavailable for some time. However, you can resend the emails after they are fixed.
- Full Mailbox
A full mailbox is another technical issue that results in soft bounced emails.
Email providers have a storage limit given per email account. For instance, Outlook has 100GB of storage. If the user runs off this limit, they cannot receive any more emails.
This can happen to recipients you are trying to reach, and you will get a warning message from ESPs if you reach a person with a full mailbox.
It will be treated as a soft bounce if this happens once or twice. However, it may become a hard bounce if it occurs continuously.
- Email Size
Email size is yet another common reason for a soft bounced email.
For example, Gmail and Outlook have an email size limit of about 25 MB; if your email size exceeds the number, you should adjust the content to fit these limits.
What should you do? Split emails with large files into separate emails, and include images only when absolutely necessary.
- Email Filtering
Email filters evaluate incoming emails for spam content. They can filter, label, move, or delete emails based on spammy words, suspicious attachments, incorrect subject lines, etc.
However, sometimes email filters become one of the reasons for a bounced email.
If you don’t want to be flagged by email filters, take some time and check your content. See whether it fits the criteria set by the receiver’s ESP’s email filters. These may ensure that your emails turn into soft bounces due to filters.
Being mindful of email bounce reasons is good, but you should also know how to handle a bounced email, which you’ll learn in the next section.
How to Calculate Your Email Bounce Rate?
Let’s break down the process of calculating your bounce rate so you can get a better understanding of how your email campaigns perform.
- First, you must determine the number of emails sent overall.
- Then, divide the number of bounced emails by the total number of sent emails.
The overall formula is quite simple, and it looks like this.
(# of bounces* / # of sent emails) x 100 = your email bounce rate
With this simple calculation, you can quickly determine how your emails are performing and where you may need to tweak things.
Now that you know what a bounced email is, the main types of email bounces, and why they matter, it’s time to learn how to handle them effectively.
Let’s start!
How to Handle a Bounced Email in 5 Effective Ways
We have defined bounced emails and covered the reasons for soft and hard bounces, but the essential and challenging part is knowing how to prevent email bounces.
We’ve put together some actionable tips to help you get started.
Let’s jump in!
1. Enable a Double Opt-In
When someone signs up for your newsletter, don’t rush to add them to your list.
Instead, send them a “Hey, did you really mean to sign up?” email. Add a link or a code they need to click or enter to confirm their subscription. It’s that simple!
Below is an example of a double opt-in request.
Why is it important?
It’s a proven way to identify typos in email addresses. No more sending emails to [[email protected]] instead of [[email protected]]! Moreover, this way, you also ensure that people actually want to hear from you.
Here’s how to implement a double-opt in for your email campaign.
- Choose an email service provider (ESP) that offers double opt-in functionality
- Create your subscription form: Ask for essential information (e.g., name, email), add a checkbox for subscribers to confirm they want to receive emails, include a privacy policy link to build trust with your email subscribers and comply with regulations.
- Design the confirmation email with a welcoming subject line, clear copy explaining the need to confirm, a confirmation button or link, and branded elements, such as your logo.
- Make a confirmation landing page with a welcome message and tell subscribers what to expect from your emails.
- Follow up with unconfirmed subscribers.
By having a proper double opt-in process, you’ll not only keep a clean and engaged email list but also avoid a bounced email, allowing you to build stronger relationships with your subscribers.
2. Keep Your Email Lists Clean
Regular email list clean-ups enhance your email marketing campaigns and, most importantly, reduce email bounce rates.
Here are some useful tips on how to keep your email lists up-to-date.
- Clean your email lists every 3-6 months
- Use email verification tools like mailfloss to identify and remove invalid addresses
- Keep track of bounce rates and remove hard bounces right away
- Update your email list with new, verified subscribers
- Check for and remove duplicate email addresses
- Remove addresses that consistently soft bounce
- Monitor spam complaints and remove those email addresses
Follow these tips to avoid the bounced email phenomenon and ensure your emails reach the inboxes of engaged recipients.
3. Avoid Free Sender Domains
Free domain addresses are the ones that you can get from Outlook, Google, Yahoo, or another email provider. The upside is that they are easy to get but may fail the DMARC check, which puts your emails at risk of automatically being bounced or put into the receiver’s junk box.
However, having an authorized business domain will keep you away from this headache. Plus, it is easy to do.
- You will need to register your domain in registrars like GoDaddy or Google Domains.
- Then, choose an email hosting service, Google Workspace, or Microsoft 365.
- Complete the authentication process by setting up the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.
- Finally, verify your domain and set up the email accounts.
Note: Free sender domains seem like a quick fix, but they can cause deliverability issues and look less professional. They also will not work for email marketing campaigns.
Why risk your email campaigns when upgrading to a custom domain is so simple?
4. Avoid Spam Words
Using spam words or phrases in your email content can lead to higher bounced email rates.
Here are some common spam trigger words to avoid:
Discounts & Offers:
100% free, Amazing offer, Best price, Bonus, Discount, Free, FREE, Last Day, Limited, Lowest price, Save money
Urgency & Pressure:
Act now!, Apply now!, Hurry up, Urgent
Financial Promises:
Double your income, Earn $, Eliminate debt, Make $
Trust & Credibility Claims:
All natural, Certified, Guarantee, Promise you, Not spam
Our advice is to always check your emails before sending them, and the best way to do it is to use Mailmeteor’s Spam Checker, which is free and easy to use.
All you need to do is input your email copy, and the tool will highlight spam words and show the overall score.
It also shows the types of spam words you have used (e.g., urgency or shady words).
This allows you to find and replace spam words and write content that does not trigger spam filters, leading to lower bounce rates.
5. Monitor Email Bounces
When choosing an email service provider, ensure it offers insights on email bounces.
The ESP should provide details on the number of bounced emails, categorize the types of bounces (hard or soft), and explain the reasons behind each bounce.
For instance, MailChimp provides information about bounces.
To learn why emails bounced, follow these steps.
Step1: Click Analytics and then Reports.
Step 2: Tap View report.
Step 3: Click the link showing the bounced emails for this campaign.
Step 4: On the Bounced page, click Bounce Reason for each email address you want to check.
After clicking the Bounce Reason, you will see a report in a separate browser tab explaining the reason behind the bounced email.
With this information at your fingertips, you can maintain a clean email list, improve your sender reputation, and ultimately achieve lower bounce rates for your email campaigns.
Conclusion
Dealing with bounced emails might seem like a huge obstacle, but it’s key to making your email marketing work better.
You can reduce bounce rates and improve your email deliverability by learning why emails bounce and following simple steps like using a custom domain, avoiding spammy words, and maintaining clean email lists.
Ready to reduce your bounce rate? Follow our tips and your future campaigns will thank you!
FAQ about a bounced email
How do I fix a bounced email?
Identify the type of email bounce, understand the causes, and take steps to fix them, such as optimizing email content or email authentication.
What is blocked vs bounced email?
The main difference between bounced and blocked emails is that the ESP accepts a bounced email that can’t be delivered, whereas a blocked email is rejected and never sent.
What should I do with bounced emails?
You must fix bounced emails because they can significantly harm the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns.
