An Email bounce is quite simply an email that that is returned to the sender because it cannot be delivered. There could be a variety of reasons. In email marketing, a bounce occurs when the subscriber’s email server rejects your email.

Of course, it’s a bad thing when your emails are not being delivered.

Basically, if your emails don’t reach your audience, everything else like persuasion, conveying your message, analytics, and all of the other stuff that we have put in our marketing efforts doesn’t matter. 

The Meaning Of Bounced Email

bounced emails are addresses that could not be delivered successfully to recipients of email marketing campaigns. For various reasons, the recipient’s server will return the newsletter to the sender, hence the term “bounce“.The reasons can be permanent or transient, solvable or irreparable, so when a bounce occurs, a return to sender message is sent back from the recipient’s mail server to help diagnose the issue. Bounces are usually categorized as either hard or soft, depending on how series the problem is.

What Is Hard And Soft Bounce Rate In Emails?

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There are generally two types of email bounces. A hard Bounce Rate is when an email is permanently bouncing back to the sender because the email address is invalid. This can happen when a person has moved companies and an email is now invalid, or simply when someone enters a junk email onto your form.

A softt email bounce rate is recognized by the recipient’s server but is returned to sender, which could be for a few reasons. It could be that the recipient’s mailbox is full (unlikely nowadays), the recipient’s email server is down or offline, or the message is too large.

Just remember that hard bounces are generally permanent, and soft bounces are generally temporary.

Ways To Reduce Hard And Soft Bounce Rate?

1. Make Sure Your Email Doesn’t Look Like “SPAM”

Spam filters are basically there to judge whether or not your email looks like spam. The challenging part is that because spammers are always changing their tactics, the filters have to change too and what does that mean for you?

It means you can’t just set it and forget it. You need to make sure that your template remains up to date and hasn’t taken on any characteristics that make it seem like spam.

Use Litmus testing tool, your account’s spam check results.

2. Send Emails On Set Schedule

The more consistent your mailing schedule the less likely your subscribers are to forget that they agreed to receive mail from your business or group.

This doesn’t mean you need to send mail every day, but depending on the engagement patterns with your mail and the specific wishes of your unique contacts, it could mean that you have a regular campaign agenda so your mail is expected by both recipient servers and your subscribers.

3. Make Sure That Your List Is Updated

A lot of bounces occur simply because your list of contacts is old. If your list is old more than 6 months since you sent to it then it’s highly likely that many of the addresses have gone stale, been closed or are otherwise inactive and will cause you to see a lot of email bounces.

4. Start With A Good Sign Up Form

In order to send email to contacts, you’ve got to get contacts. One of the best ways to do this is by using a sign-up form or web form. This allows people to input their information and email address. Make sure you’ve got a good captcha system in place to prevent fake sign-ups by computers or bots.

5.Use Confirmed Opt-in

Confirmed opt-in can help assure data quality across all of your subscribe forms. By ensuring that people must activate their subscription with a confirmation email, any erroneous or inactive addresses simply won’t make it onto your active subscriber list. This can greatly reduce potential bounces, and lists using confirmed opt-in tend to be more engaged and active too.

6. Monitor Your Email Campaigns Closely

Monitor the results of your campaigns and journeys closely. If you see a spike in bounce rates, take a look at the bounce activity report. Are you seeing an influx of hard and soft bounce rate, or have you see a huge upswing in soft bounces, perhaps at a particular domain?

Take action to improve your sign-up form, double check your data sources and the age of your lists. Ensure your authentication is in place and that your send-from address is from the same domain. If you’re still at a loss over why you are seeing high bounce rates, reach out to expert SME Network’s email marketing services, who are pro in ensuring your message is conveyed to the targetd audience.

Wrapping Up

Email delivery is important. There could be a few reasons for high bounce rates, including bad sender reputation, poor software, low quality email opt-ins that allow junk emails to pass through, and more.

Focus on removing hard and soft bounce rate, and think about cleansing your list of long term inactive subscribers as well.

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