Why it's Important to Keep Your Email Bounce Rates Low + 5 Tips

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10 billion US dollars.

That’s the expected market cap for email marketing by 2023.

But how can you cash in on this massive investment?

You need to make sure that your emails are getting delivered to the right inboxes.

One of the most important email marketing metrics that could prevent this is your bounce rate.

In this post, we’ll teach you what the acceptable bounce rate is, how to calculate it, and we'll offer tips to help you beat it.

Let’s begin.

1. What is an email bounce rate?

Bounced emails occur when emails sent from your email server don’t make it to your intended recipient's mailbox.

When this happens, you’ll usually receive an auto-reply message stating what the reason for the delivery failure is.

Your email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that don’t reach an inbox, compared to those that do.

When it comes to email bounces, there are 2 different types — hard bounces and soft bounces.

Let’s investigate.

1.1. The different bounce rates: Hard bounce and soft bounce

Source: EmailAcademy.com

A hard bounce happens when an email doesn’t reach its intended recipient, usually due to a permanent error.

However, in some instances, this could also be due to strict email security filters.

Hard bounces can be caused by:

Invalid or non-existent email addresses on your email list
An incorrect email domain
Inactive email addresses (old and unused)

Or if you’re already blacklisted because your marketing emails were marked as spam.

Soft bounces, on the other hand, are far less severe.

A soft bounce occurs when your email successfully leaves your sending domain towards a valid email address but bounces back from the receiving server it was sent to.

This can happen because:

The inbox your email was sent to, is full
The recipient’s mail server is down
The email you sent was too large for the recipient’s inbox

But don’t worry, soft bounces are only temporary and there are ways to fix both hard and soft bounces that we’ll discuss later in this post.

Now that you have an idea of why emails bounce, let’s look at what is generally considered to be an acceptable email bounce rate.

1.2. What is the average email bounce rate?

Below we’ve compiled a table of bounce rates based on previous data gathered:

Source: SendPulse.com

What we can gather from this data is that, no matter what industry you’re in, the average bounce rate of your email campaigns shouldn’t exceed 2%.

If they do, you’ll need to get it fixed quickly.

High bounce rates hurt your sender reputation and can cause some dreaded spam filters to mark your email marketing campaigns as a red flag.

Before we look at how to beat high bounce rates, we first need to see if it’s necessary.

2. How to calculate your email bounce rate

Calculating your email bounce rate

By dividing the number of marketing emails that bounced with the number of emails sent and then multiplying it by 100, you’ll be able to see if your email list needs to be cleaned up.

2.1. How to check valid emails online to reduce your bounce rate

Often, a higher bounce rate can occur when you send campaigns to invalid addresses that have made it onto your list.

Luckily, you can clean up your contact list and verify any contact information you do have.

With courtesy to Lemlist, here are 3 of the best online tools that you can use to check which emails are bouncing (based on research. 1 email address = 1 credit):

Clearout — Starting at $21 for 3,000 credits. Comes with 100 free credits
ZeroBounce — Starting at $16 for 2,000 credits. Comes with 100 free credits
Bouncer — Starting at $5 for 1,000 credits. Comes with 100 free credits

3. 5 tips help to reduce your email bounce rate

When it comes to dodging the dreaded spam filter, you need to look further than just checking for valid email addresses.

Here are 5 tips to help reduce your bounce rate when you send a normal email message or email campaign:

1. Create an emailing schedule

The more frequent you send emails to your active subscribers, the lower the chances that they’ll forget about you and mark your emails as spam.

Sending scheduled emails will also improve your subscriber engagement and help you discover invalid addresses easier.

2. Use double opt-ins

Sending a subscription confirmation email to a user through double opt-ins will help verify their email address and prove that they want to receive your content.

More active users will also increase your email click-through rates (CTR) and improve your chances of making a sale.

3. Make it easy to unsubscribe

This is required by law in most countries. Alternatively, have your subscribers set email preferences to prevent you from losing them completely.

If they still choose to unsubscribe, at least you’ll be saved from the spam folder.

4. Use a business domain

Sending email campaigns from free domains like “@gmail.com” have a higher chance of being marked as spam through the DMARC policy.

Sending emails using your own custom domain also indicates that you’re a legitimate sender and increases your chances of looking more trustworthy to new users.

5. Triple-check email formatting

Make sure there are no broken images, spelling errors, or suspicious subject lines in your emails.

This will help prevent spam filters from flagging your email.

If you’d like more help from systeme.io to easily delete inactive users, click here.

For more tips to reduce spam complaints and to improve your email marketing metrics, click here.

4. Systeme.io: The best email marketing platform

systeme.io logo

When it comes to email marketing, systeme.io is the best in the business.

To help your emails perform at optimal levels, our email editor allows you to create:

Text-based emails
Visual emails

Text-based emails are still a good option for passing on information, considering that roughly 30% of users have their email service providers set to block downloading images.

On the other hand, visual emails have a 65% higher click-through rate.

Whichever one you choose, we’ve got you covered.

With our email marketing software, you’ll be able to create newsletters and campaigns that can be sent manually or scheduled to be sent at a specific time:

Scheduling when to send an email with systeme.io

Campaigns and newsletters can be connected to automation rules and be sent when a user performs a certain action (subscribes to a list, makes a sale, clicks on a page, etc.).

To improve your email deliverability, here at systeme.io, we divide users’ IP addresses into different pools based on their deliverability reputation.

Users are categorized by color (gray, red, yellow, green) and their email delivery statistics are analyzed daily to help maintain a good IP reputation.

For more information on how this works, click here.

Analyzing multiple email rates on systeme.io

Creating an email account with systeme.io will allow you to:

Send unlimited emails
Segment your list using tags
Automatically optimize your emails for mobile devices
Automate your email marketing with automation rules and workflows
Analyze your campaign with in-depth statistics
Build sales funnels that seamlessly integrate with your email marketing

And the fun doesn’t stop there!

As an all-in-one solution, systeme.io also offers a wide variety of extra features to take your business where it’s meant to go — straight to the top!

4.1. Systeme.io’s additional features

systeme.io’s features

Besides our email marketing features, systeme.io also offers the following to boost your business:

Build sales funnels with our drag-and-drop editor
Design a website from scratch or use our proven templates
Manage your affiliate program and automate your payouts
Automate your entire business with IF/THEN rules and workflows
Create evergreen webinars, online courses, and blogs
Sell your products on our marketplace

You might be thinking that with all of these features, systeme.io’s price tag is surely big enough to break the bank.

Well — think again . . .

4.2. Systeme.io’s pricing

systeme.io’s pricing plans

Subscription to systeme.io comes at the most affordable price imaginable — absolutely free!

Not only is our Free plan free forever, but you also don’t need to enter any card details to get started.

Our Free plan is available for up to 2,000 contacts and gives you:

3 sales funnels with 10 funnel steps
1 blog and 1 membership site
1 automation rule and workflow
1 tag
1 email campaign
1 one-click upsell with 1 order bump
1 A/B test
1 coupon code

Systeme.io also offers 3 additional pricing plans to choose from that can be billed either monthly or yearly. The latter gets you a 30% discount and free web migration.

Each plan (including the Free plan) comes with the following core features:

Unlimited email sends, blog posts, storage space, and membership site members
Access to deadline funnels
Stripe and PayPal integrations
Affiliate program management
24/7 email support

Our plan features also scale as your business grows and are priced as follows:

Startup plan — $27/month or $228/year — 5,000 contacts
Webinar plan — $47/month or $396/year — 10,000 contacts
Enterprise plan — $97/month or $828/year — 15,000 contacts

If your business exceeds 15,000 contacts, don’t worry!

We also have a Custom scaling option that maxes out at $547/month for up to 100,000 contacts in your email list.

5. Conclusion

When it comes to reducing your bounce rate, remember to send your email campaigns through business domain email addresses and clean your email list regularly.

Also, make sure your subscribers can unsubscribe from your delivered emails (to prevent them from marking your emails as spam) and use double opt-in systems to grab valid emails.

Lastly, let systeme.io be your right hand in providing you with unlimited and automated email sends and analytics, to help you focus on what’s important — building your business.

Ready to be discovered by inboxes across the world? Sign up today!