No matter your structure, the type of emails you send (transactional emails, sales or email marketing, …), you must have heard about the bounce rate, at least once.
In this article, we will see all the components of email bounces rate and how to send better emails to get the lowest bounces rates possible. After reading this blog, it will not be a nightmare for you and your company anymore.
What is actually a bounce rate?
Well, we have two definitions depending on the domain that you are talking about.
You may already discover the bounce rate from your website analysis.
This is the percentage of visitors who leave your website without taking action on it, like buying something, filling out a form, or going to a different page, … It is a single-page session. It is important because it tells you how your content is relevant to the visitors.
In this article we will not go through all the components of website bounces rates. If you need more information check out this article from Google, you will find all the information you may need!
So let’s talk about the main subject and why you are reading this article: Bounced emails
Email Bounce Rate is the percentage of how frequently your emails get “bounced” from your client email infrastructure. This is when the email cannot reach the designated recipient and must be returned to the sender (basically you).
What are the reasons why an email has bounced?
An email can be bouncing for various reasons. It can be permanent or temporary, solvable or definitive. When a bounce occurs, it is important to understand and diagnose the issue.
We can recognize 2 different bounce rates depending on the problem that was encountered by your email: Soft Bounces and Hard Bounces.
What is Soft Bounce?
Soft bounces are temporary issues and can occur for 3 main reasons :
Like it is a temporary problem, you don’t have to remove the address from your sending list unless the issue is regular.
What is Hard Bounce?
Hard bounce, on the other hand, is a permanent email delivery failure. In this case, the hard bounce can be the result of the following problems :
In case of a hard bounce, you should remove the address from your email list.
What is a good email bounce rate?
It is essential to understand that a small number of bounces can be predicted. A change in the server, clients change roles or jobs, a temporary server problem can result in your bounce rate.
In general, if you have a bounce rate lower than 2%, it can be considered a good rate. (For example, if you send 100 emails, you will have 2 or fewer bounces reports). The optimal bounce rate for perfect infrastructure is usually under 0,2% for hard bounces, and barely any soft bounces.
Anything between a 2% and 5% bounce rate on an email campaign may keep your attention. Meanwhile, if the rate is more than 5% and even superior at 10% you should look at it closely. Those percentages may suggest a significant problem that you need to resolve quickly.
If you want to learn more about the average bounces rate across industries, You can check the table below by Hubspot or this article from MailChimp.
How to Reduce the Email Bounce Rate
Now that you have understood everything about bounces rates, you may ask how to prevent higher bounce rates. There are a few things that would help to achieve a lower bounces rate.
To Wrap Up
Email bounce rate can be one of the most frustrating pieces of email marketing. It means your clients will not see you sent a message because they will not receive them.
By following this article, you have now some keys to understanding email bounce rates and preventing them to happen.
If you still need help with a high bounce rate in your company, MailSoar Team can help you to return to an acceptable rate and increase your email deliverability.
