Email Bounce Rate: How to reduce it?

Comment réduire le taux de rebond

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.

Les différentes raisons de l'augmentation du taux de rebond

What is Soft Bounce?

Soft bounces are temporary issues and can occur for 3 main reasons :

  • Temporary Unavailable

    In this case, the issue is with the receiving email server who rejected your message or was unavailable.

  • Mailbox Full

    This means, your subscribers’ mailbox is full and cannot receive any more mail.

  • Email Size

    Your email and its content are too big to be sent or receive.

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 :

  • Domain problem

    The email you try to send cannot reach the person because the domain name doesn't exist. You may have made a mistake in writing the recipient's address.

  • Email Problem

    It can be related to the previous one, but in this case, the delivery failed because the address doesn't exist on this domain but the domain is available.

  • Server Problem

    The receiving email server blocked and reject your email and considered it spam. It can also occur when the recipient's email address is blocked.

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.

Taux d'ouverture des emails par secteurs
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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.

  • Verify your email list

    Email verification must be done before each campaign to make sure your mailing list is still healthy.

    Remove the undeliverable address or the person who did not open your last few emails (if you send an email every week and someone hasn't opened your email for few months, you should maybe remove him from your marketing list)

  • Authenticate your emails

    Email Authentication is one of the most important factors of email strategy. You should authenticate your email address to allow the email provider to verifies your identity. Failing in your authentication process may leads servers to bounce you as they cannot determine the legitimacy of your campaign.

    By authenticating your sending domain with DMARC for example, you provide legitimacy and authenticity to your emails and this can have a great impact on soft bounces and improve your Email Sender Reputation and at the same time your deliverability.

  • Improve your user experience

    Send consistently and frequently, indeed with a regular mailing schedule, subscribers are less likely to forget you and your company. You need to develop a sending email timetable to help your receivers and the recipient’s servers remember you.

    What is the perfect number of emails sent per week/month? Just testing, even though it will be a long process with some mistakes you should start sending emails once per week and then make slight increases.

    MailSoar expert can help you find the ideal amount of emails you should send to get the best deliverability.

  • Be careful about your email infrastructure

    If you are using a free domain like Google or Yahoo to send your email marketing campaign, you have a better chance to be bounced by Gmail or to land into the promotions or spam folder of your customer.

    Be sure to choose the best email infrastructureand authenticate it before sending any email marketing campaign. It will not only improve significantly your bounce rates, but it will also improve your general email deliverability and inbox placement.

To Wrap Up

Comment réduire le taux de rebond

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.

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