Sending email marketing campaigns will result in bounces. It’s nearly impossible to get a 100% deliverability rate. But even so, aiming for the lowest email bounce rate should still be one of your priorities, because it contributes to the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign. Let’s dive into more regarding email bounce rate, plus six tactics to improve deliverability.
Email Bounce Rate Defined
An email bounce rate refers to the percentage of emails that bounce back to you, the sender. A low bounce rate is better since it means more emails are being delivered. Bounce rates can be broken down into two types:
- Soft bounces: These are often caused by temporary delivery issues that can be solved. Often, this bounce rate may be caused by your recipient having a full mailbox, an offline server, or the email message sent is just too massive.
- Hard bounces: On the other hand, hard bounces happen when the email can’t be delivered permanently. Emails are returned to the sending email server because of various reasons including:
- Non-existent email address
- Invalid domain name
- Inactive subscriber mailbox
Email bounces may also be triggered if you have a poor IP reputation. If your email subject or content has spam-like elements, the chances of it being rejected are high (here are tips to reduce the spam elements in your emails).
Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate
The ideal bounce rate for your email campaign is 2%. But this can be industry dependent. Reduce your bounce rate and aim to improve your email delivery as it can influence your IP reputation. Here are 6 tactics to use:
1. Maintain a Healthy Email List
You may have a good email list at the moment, but a lot can change in a year. Your contacts may change or delete their email addresses. Your B2B customers may change companies and jobs. If you send to these email addresses, you may hit a hard bounce.
Consider removing hard-bounced email addresses, inactive users, and contacts who haven’t clicked on links in your emails in three months or longer. This should keep your list cleaner and more efficient. Another option to ensure a clean list is to ask your subscribers directly for updated information and preferences so you send them the content they’re interested in.
With Everlytic, hard bounces are automatically excluded to avoid emails being sent to this contact again.
2. Use Double Opt-In Forms
Double opt-ins add an extra step to your email subscription process by getting the subscriber to verify their email address. It’s the easiest way to avoid an increase in email bounce rates, as you’re sending to subscribers who have given you permission to send them communication and have confirmed that the address is active.
3. Use Authenticated Domains
Your emails may fail a DMARC check when you use an unauthenticated domain. An authenticated domain legitimises your account, ensuring that email service providers (ESPs), such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo, won’t route your emails to junk. Authenticating your domains improves email deliverability.
Note that free email domains like “@hotmail.com” can’t be authenticated.
All sender email addresses in Everlytic are authenticated before sending to ensure superior delivery rates.
4. Segment Lists by Engagement
Segmenting your list helps to better target your subscribers with content they want and need. Because the content is so relevant, they’re less likely to flag your emails as spam.
Your lists can show ESPs that your emails pass the engagement test. Your active recipients want to receive your emails, which will improve your overall delivery and email campaign rates.
In addition to segmentation, you can also run retargeting campaigns to re-engage inactive subscribers, improving bounce rates and deliverability.
According to WordStream, segmented email campaigns have an open rate that’s 14.32% higher compared to non-segmented ones.
5. Send Consistently and Frequently
Maintaining regular contact with your subscribers is vital in email marketing. Don’t let your lists go stale or remain inactive as this may cause an increase in spam complaints and bounces while decreasing engagement. By being consistent, you can easily and quickly spot bounced contacts rather than seeing many bounces at once from a list that is emailed occasionally.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to email sending frequency, consider emailing your subscribers consistently so they are more likely to engage. Here are 4 tips on what to consider when looking at email sending frequency.
6. Remove Spam Elements from Emails
Did you know that more than 53% of global emails sent are spam? ESPs take steps to identify and remove these types of messages from customers’ inboxes.
Even if you implement some of the tactics above, your emails may still bounce if they have countless spam elements. Reduce your email’s chances of going to spam with tips like these:
- Avoid buying databases or email lists
- Use a legitimate email address linked to your website domain, like [email protected]
- Offer an unsubscribe option on all the communication you send
Fewer Bounces = More Business
The health of your email list determines the health of your email marketing campaigns. Subscriber lists with fewer bounces give you better deliverability, increasing your overall campaign rates and the likelihood of more business. Use the six tactics in this post to help you reach your marketing goals.
