Effective Ways To Help You Lower Your Email Bounce Rate

As we all know, email marketing is one of the finest and most profitable online email marketing strategies these days, but on the other hand, it is not that easy either. Creating a perfect campaign requires a lot of effort, but still, in the end, there is no guarantee of 100% success rate. The primary reason behind the failure of any email marketing technique is the email bounce rate. 

Bouncing emails is entirely frustrating. If any of your email bounces, that particular customer will never receive your email again. Plus, higher email bounce rates can hurt email deliverability. That is why it is essential to monitor the bounces proactively. Here, we will discuss the various types of bounces, why they happen, and the effective ways to reduce them.

What is an Email Bounce Rate?

Bounces are typically the inevitable part of your email marketing, but still, you have opportunities to understand the reason behind it and reduce it. In simple words, the email bounce rate is the percentage of the emails that come back to you. There are two different kinds of bounces:

1. Soft Email Bounce Rate

These are caused due to the temporary delivery issues going on with the customers. The reason behind soft email bounce are:

• The recipient's mailbox is full
• The size of your email is too large
• The recipient's mail server is down
• The email account of the customer is temporarily suspended

2. Hard Email Bounce Rate

This means permanent delivery failure. The reason behind hard email bounces are:

• The customer's email address is not valid or does not exist
• The domain name from which you are sending emails does not exist
• The recipient's mailbox is no longer active

Why do the Emails Bounce?

There are various reasons behind the bouncing of emails, such as:

• The customer does not have access to that email account anymore
• The mail server is down or under maintenance
• The email address is invalid
• The recipient's inbox is full
• The recipient had put your name in the spam or block list
• The reputation of your domain is not good
• The body of your email is too large
• Your emails are failing to meet the server requirements

Insights of Email Bounce Rate You Must Know

The email bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of hard bounces by the number of emails you have sent. For example, if 5 of your emails get bounced back out of the 100 emails you sent, your bounce rate will be 5%. Depending on your industry, a reasonable email bounce rate ranges between 2% to 5%, and anything above 5% is a trigger alert. A high email bounce rate indicates poor delivery of emails to your customers, or you can say that your marketing campaign will fail. Therefore, in such cases, working on your email lists is recommended. 

There was research done in 2018 on various kinds of industries to understand the average bounce rate; below are some of its highlights:

Proven Ways to Lower the Email Bounce Rate

If you are facing the bounces more than the average bounces and you would like to reduce this number, then you have come to the right place. Here is the list of ways that can be used to reduce the number of bounces and increase the deliverability of your emails:

1. Draft Engaging Content

The email content plays an important role in the success of your email marketing campaigns. Just consider yourself as a reader of a marketing email, so:

• Would you read an email with a boring subject line?
• Would you read a long email?
• Would you read an email that does not look nice in the beginning?

The answer is No. Therefore, it is essential to focus on the content of your mail. Ensure it is short, sweet, and straight to the point. Else the recipients are either going to delete it or spam it. And if it gets marked as spam, that will affect the sender's domain reputation.

2. Authenticate Your Email Domain

It is one of the most efficient email marketing tips that you should always use an authenticated domain server for sending marketing emails. The three primary email authentication methods are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which should be performed on your domains. Using these methods impacts the delivery rates directly and also prevents sending negative security alerts to the customers.

3. Use double Opt-in’s

The primary benefit of using double opt-ins in your emails is that it reduces the number of fake sign-ups to your website, as this feature asks them to enter their email address. Once any customer clicks the double opt-in button, it gives you a confirmation about a new subscriber. 

4. Avoid Using the Free Sender Domains

The first step of an email marketing strategy is getting a professional email domain to send emails to the customer's list. Using free domains like "gmail.com" or "yahoo.com" can instantly increase the chances of being marked as "Spam" by the recipient. Sending emails from your domain, like "[email protected]," verifies that the sender is legitimate, and the customers start trusting your business.

5. Regularly Clean Your Email Lists

One of the most effective email marketing tips to reduce bounces is maintaining the hygiene of your email address database. Therefore, it is said that regular clean-up of the email lists is required. Also, you can refer to some tools for building up the email list that can help you get more customers and fewer bounces. 

Regular cleaning of the email lists ensures that it has valid and active email addresses. With this clean-up, you will also learn about your email's soft and hard bounces so that you can remove those invalid email addresses.

6. Ensure the Content of the Email is not Spammy

Statistics prove that almost 53% of global marketing emails are just spam. 

So you should ensure that your emails do not fall under this category, and to make this happen, avoid using too big or too small images and avoid using the words like:

• Sale
• Deals
• Free Offers
• Clearance
• Cash Bonuses

7. Consistency is the Key to Success

Showing up regularly in the customer's inboxes increases their interest in your business, and they start opening and engaging with your marketing emails. This also keeps your subscribers list active and fresh.

8. Remove Hard Bounce Email Addresses

While making the email lists clean up, you get to know if there are any hard bounces on your emails. Before you send any following marketing email, remove that hard-bounced email. Moreover, they are invalid or incorrect, thus, there is no point in keeping that.

9. Verify the Customer's Email Address

Another critical email marketing tip is to get the customer's email address verified beforehand, as it helps in reducing the email bounce rate to an extent. 

10. Keep Track of Email Deliverability

To maintain email deliverability, you should always be on top of preserving email performance. Keeping track of whether the email is delivered helps you find the reasons for bounces. 

11. Write Quality Emails

Your emails are essential for your prospects, so ensure they are relevant to the customers' interests. Using images or emojis and compelling subject lines attracts the reader to your email. 

12.  Ask Customers to Update Their Information

There can be situations where the customer could have changed their email address or any other contact details. It would be best if you asked them to update their information frequently in your emails so that you can avoid any bounces. 

Conclusion

Emails are the first phase of a marketing campaign, and email bounces are the second phase. However, the email bounce rate should be at most 2%. All the ways mentioned above of lowering bounce rates are doable. Remember that bouncing is a continuous process, so cleaning up the email list every six months is a mandatory tip. 

And remember, never buy an email list; that is not worth it. Even if the bounce rates are healthy, there are plenty of email marketing tips mentioned that you should follow to make your campaign successful, like segmentation of email list and good quality content.