How to Reduce Bounce Rate in Email Marketing

What is a Good Bounce Rate for Email?

When it comes to email marketing, bounces are inevitable. A small percentage of the emails you send won’t successfully be delivered due to different factors. This percentage is your email bounce rate.

Some of the most common reasons why emails bounce include:

• Invalid email addresses, including misspelled, incorrect, and non-existent addresses
• Inboxes that have exceeded their allotted storage limits
• Emails have large file attachments
• Email server downtime due to maintenance, high traffic, or other factors
• Authentication failures cause emails to be rejected

Generally, anywhere between 2% and 5% is an acceptable email bounce rate. Anything higher than 5% indicates a need to address email deliverability issues. When you get too many bounce-back notifications, it’s time to strategize how to reduce email bounce rate.

7 Best Strategies to Reduce Bounce Rate

1. Clean your email list

Stale email lists lead to high bounce rates, so keep your list updated. Many people change email addresses when they switch careers or mail providers. Then, some use mailboxes connected to their domains and stop using the addresses once the domains expire. While their old emails may still be valid, the inboxes eventually become full and unable to receive incoming mail. Some mail accounts may also be closed automatically by email providers if inactive for several years.

Now, the question is, how do you clean an email list to reduce a bounce rate? Start by reviewing non-delivery notifications for mail addresses that bounce frequently. Check for simple typo errors in the addresses. If the addresses are correct, send subscription reconfirmation emails several times to weed out inactive subscribers. If the emails still bounce back, remove the addresses from your list.

2. Use confirmed opt-in and provide opt-out options

Prevent bouncing emails by improving the quality of your mailing list. For new subscribers, implement a double opt-in process that confirms their interest in receiving emails from you. This ensures that your list mainly includes subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content.

To keep your bounce rate low, you’d also want to give recipients an easy way to unsubscribe if they no longer wish to receive your emails. A convenient way to opt out of the subscription will keep your emails from being marked as spam.

3. Hyper-personalize your emails

Approximately 65% of marketers believe that personalization is most effective in emails. However, simply addressing your recipient by their name is not enough. The content itself must be aligned with the recipient’s needs and interests. This hyper-personalization is one of the most effective ways to stop bounced emails.

Hyper-personalization requires a deep understanding of how your recipients interact with your brand. Use digital tools to gain insights from their purchase history and browsing behavior to deliver content that meets their specific needs when they signal their preferences. Offering the right products at the right time improves engagement and boosts conversions and sales.

4. Go mobile-first

If you still haven’t integrated mobile-first solutions into your digital marketing strategy, you’re missing out on reaching billions of mobile users. Recent email marketing statistics, for instance, show that 41.9% of opened emails were accessed from mobile phones, underscoring the need to optimize your email campaigns for mobile.

Use responsive design to make your message content readable on different devices, whatever their screen sizes are. Simplify content and structure it well so recipients can quickly skim through it. Instead of text links, use CTA buttons, which are larger and more accessible to tap. Keep email file size low to improve load times and keep your message out of the trash bin.

5. Make content short but impactful

Keep your emails from getting snagged by spam filters by crafting concise yet impactful content. Send only information that’s relevant to your subscribers and add interactive content that captures their attention. When recipients interact with your content, future emails are less likely to be marked as spam.

Use dynamic content blocks that are personalized to each recipient’s past interactions with your brand. However, make sure to balance graphics and file size. While visual and interactive elements enhance appeal, overloading your content may increase file size, which may lead to high bounce rates. Most mail providers limit file size to around 20 to 25 MB only. If your message, including attachments, exceeds this, it will be reverted to you.

6. Build trust through security features and privacy practices.

When email recipients trust your brand, they are less likely to mark your emails as spam or put you on their block list. One way to instill confidence is by implementing stringent privacy and security measures. Be transparent on how you use data gathered from email interactions. Adhere to data protection regulations and have systems in place to safeguard the personal information of your subscribers.

Make your efforts clear by including information about your privacy and security measures in your email footers or privacy page. On the opt-in page, be proactive and communicate these clearly to reassure subscribers about the safety of their data.

7. Augment email marketing with AI, but use AI responsibly

As much as 49% of marketers who use generative AI leverage the technology to create email content, but AI can also be used in other aspects of email marketing. Aside from customizing content, it can be leveraged to gather and process data, analyze user behavior, and identify optimal send times for each recipient.

For re-engagement campaigns, AI can be quite helpful in determining the purchase stage in real time. This can be used to send targeted messages instantly to boost conversions. To further reduce bounce rates, AI can be used for email validation and for detecting deliverability issues.

However, AI still requires careful use, especially in content creation. Aside from being prone to bias and plagiarism, it is not always reliable in aligning content with brand values. Using AI will enhance email marketing, but make sure to practice due diligence in checking AI-generated content.

Reduce Email Bounce Rate to Optimize Marketing Outcomes

No matter how well-crafted your email campaigns are, if they do not get into the right inboxes, they’ll be rendered ineffective in achieving your marketing goals. Don’t let all your hard work from crafting that email campaign go to waste.

The strategies we listed above give you a good start to finding out how to stop bounced emails. Use them as a guide to improve email deliverability and keep email bounce rates low.