What is Bounce rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of sent emails that were rejected by the receiving server and not delivered.
A hard bounce is a permanent failure, such as an address that does not exist. A soft bounce is temporary, such as a full mailbox or a server problem.
Remove hard bounces immediately. Repeated soft bounces should also be suppressed. A high bounce rate damages sender reputation, so it often points to old, purchased or badly collected addresses.
A worked example.
After importing an old customer list, a store sees many bounces on the first send. It removes the hard bounces, suppresses repeat soft bounces and sets a rule to remove new hard bounces automatically.
Common mistakes.
- Continuing to mail hard bounces
- Importing old lists without cleaning them
- Ignoring a sudden rise in bounces
Want this handled for your store? See our email deliverability service or book a free audit.
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