7 Ways To Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate

Seeing a high bounce rate on your email campaigns? This means your emails aren’t getting delivered to your audience. And if your emails don’t reach your audience, you won’t get any replies or create new growth opportunities.

In this article, you'll find 7 proven tips to reduce your email bounce rate, improve email deliverability and get more replies!
‍

What is email bounce rate?

Email bounce means an email that couldn't be delivered to your audience. Your email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that couldn’t get delivered, also known as ‘bounced.’

There are two types of email bounce:

1. Hard bounce:

A hard bounce happens when your email isn’t delivered because the receiver’s email address is permanently invalid.

An email address is permanently invalid if:

• the email address has been deleted
• there is a typo or formatting error in the email address
• the domain of the email address is inactive

2. Soft bounce:

A soft bounce happens when an email bounces because of a temporary issue with the receiver’s email address. Unlike a hard bounce, this doesn’t mean a permanent delivery failure; you can try sending the email again.

Some common reasons for soft bounces could be:

• your receiver’s inbox is full
• your receiver’s email server is temporarily inactive
• your email size is too large to be delivered
• the receiver’s email provider blocks your email address
  ‍

Why is it important to reduce your email bounce rate?

A high email bounce rate ruins your sender reputation and reduces your chances of getting replies. Email providers and spam filters could permanently block your emails from getting delivered to your audience.

Your average bounce rate should be between 2-5%. This depends on the types of emails you send (cold emails, newsletters, transactional emails, etc.) and your sender reputation.

A bounce rate of 5% or higher could mean a problem with your email list, sending practices, or email deliverability and should be fixed immediately!
‍

7 ways to reduce your email bounce rates

Here are 7 proven ways you can reduce email bounce rates and reach your audience:
‍

1. Verify your email list before you send emails

Your email list is all the people you’re reaching out to via your emails. Sending emails to invalid addresses increases your email bounce rate, which lowers your deliverability score, and sends your emails to spam!

Verifying your email list prevents this by telling you which email addresses on your list are undeliverable or invalid.

Here are some tips to verify your email list:

• use tools like Debounce or Bouncer to verify your email list quality
• remove all invalid email addresses from your email list
• remove any email address that marks your emails as spam from your list
• check your audience’s email address for typos or errors like these before sending 👇

Alternatively, if you only have to verify a single email address, use lemlist's free email verifier below. ⬇️

2. Avoid hard bounces

Remove all email addresses that show “permanent delivery failure” from your email list. Sending emails to such invalid addresses damages your sender reputation.

3. Use a professional sender domain

By using free email domains (for example, name@outlook.com), you're more likely to have a poor sender reputation and get blocked by email providers. Instead, use a professional sender domain (for example, name@lempire.co) while sending email campaigns to protect your sender reputation and keep bounce rates low.

4. Use a reputable email service provider

The email service provider that you choose for your email campaign plays a huge role in the success of your email marketing efforts.

Here are some tips for choosing the right ESP for your business:

• make sure it follows email deliverability best practices
• your ESP should provide email automation support & track email metrics
• avoid ESPs that spammers often use, this hurts your sender reputation
  ‍

You can use an outreach tool like lemlist to track your email campaign bounce rates 👇

5. Optimize your email content

Your email content should be relevant to your audience and give them value. This reduces your chances of getting spam complaints and improves your sender reputation.

Here are 5 tips for writing emails that land in your audience’s inbox:

• use links instead of attachments to share files
• keep a healthy image-to-text ratio (check out the example below)
• add an opt-out option at the end of your emails
• personalize your subject line & email
• avoid using spam-trigger words in your emails

Use our Cold Email Audit tool below to analyze your emails' content. ⬇️

6. Maintain your email list as it grows

As your email list grows, you need to maintain it to keep bounce rates low. Here are 3 best practices to use as your email list grows:

1. Segment your email list: Divide your email list into smaller, more targeted groups. This increases your chances of getting replies & boosts your deliverability. You’ll also see which segments are getting higher bounce rates.
2. Send re-engagement campaigns: Create a segment of the audience that hasn’t engaged with your emails in the past 90+ days. Send highly personalized, valuable content to warm up this audience again and get more replies.
3. Use a double opt-in option: A double opt-in process means sending an email to new subscribers to confirm that they want to receive emails from you. Emailing people who have explicitly asked to get them prevents spam complaints.
   
   The double opt-in process boosts your open rates, replies, and deliverability.
   
   Here’s what you could include in your confirmation email:
   ‍
   • what are your emails about?
   • when & how often do you send emails?
   • what’s the value for your audience?

7. Monitor your deliverability

Use a warm-up and deliverability booster like lemwarm before-during-after sending email campaigns. Monitoring your deliverability is an effective way to avoid soft bounces and keep your emails away from spam.

While monitoring your deliverability, here’s what you should check:

• your deliverability score (keep it > 90)
• your technical setup
• your email metrics (spam complaint rates, bounce rates, etc.)

You can use your warm-up and deliverability booster to check your technical setup. ⬇️

The key to low bounce rates in the long run

There’s no point in writing effective emails if they aren’t delivered. A high email bounce rate ruins your sender reputation and reduces your deliverability. Using the tips in this article, you can avoid email bounces, reach your audience & get more replies!

To keep your bounce rate low in the long run, make sure to:

• use a warm-up & deliverability booster
• verify your email list before sending email campaigns
• and get a professional sender domain for your outreach

Join our weekly newsletter to get more expert tips and strategies to avoid deliverability issues and land your emails in the inbox. 🙌

‍