How should bounce rate be measured to maintain a healthy email reputation?
Summary
What email marketers say13Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Litmus Blog shares that A/B testing email content and subject lines can improve engagement and reduce the likelihood of emails being marked as spam, which can indirectly lower bounce rates.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that besides the bounce rates, also check the SMTP replies you get.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum explains the importance of regular email list cleaning to remove invalid or inactive addresses. This prevents future bounces and maintains a healthy sender reputation.
Email marketer from Marketing Agency Website recommends using double opt-in to ensure that only valid and interested subscribers are added to the email list, minimizing the chance of bounces.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that looking at bounce rate "per campaign" or "per campaign, after more than 24h" is a good way to tackle the question. Per MBP is also more relevant than globally, as it could highlight a problem on one in particular.
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog suggests warming up IP addresses gradually. This involves slowly increasing the volume of emails sent from a new IP address to establish a positive sending history with ISPs.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that the reason why "more than 24h" is mentioned, it's because the mta might keep some emails in queues for 24h, but sometimes more or less (depending on your settings), and those emails not sent after such delay would "bounce". Not because the MX server told you to go away, but because your queues were stalled or something like that. It's an important indicator for your deliverability or reputation.
Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog suggests segmenting email lists based on engagement and bounce history. Sending to highly engaged segments can improve overall deliverability and reduce the impact of bounces.
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog shares that monitoring bounce rate trends over time is crucial. Spikes in bounce rates can indicate problems with list hygiene or sending practices, requiring immediate investigation.
Email marketer from Reddit user r/emailmarketing shares that an acceptable bounce rate is generally below 2%. Aiming for a rate below 1% is ideal for maintaining a strong sender reputation.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that following the bounce rate per day is also interesting, but it really depends what you're trying to do, monitor or prove.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow shares that Implementing proper bounce tracking mechanisms (e.g., using VERP) to accurately identify and process bounced emails.
Email marketer from Email Deliverability Blog emphasizes that bounce rate is a critical factor in determining email deliverability. High bounce rates can lead to blacklisting and reduced inbox placement.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise answers that high bounce rates are due to two different issues, those that are 'hard' bounces and will never be delivered because the mailbox doesn't exist or is disabled, and temporary delivery failures, or 'soft' bounces where the recipient server tells the sender that there's a temporary problem.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that bounce rate is a critical measure of the health of your email program. Monitor it closely in combination with complaint rates and engagement to quickly catch any deliverability issues that may be impacting your reputation.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from RFC standard states that understanding SMTP error codes (e.g., 550 for permanent failure, 450 for temporary failure) helps in diagnosing the reasons behind bounces and implementing appropriate remediation strategies.
Documentation from SparkPost Documentation distinguishes between hard and soft bounces, and their impact on email reputation. Hard bounces should be removed immediately from your list, whereas Soft bounces could be a temporary issue.
Documentation from Microsoft explains that monitor your sender reputation using tools like Sender Score. A good sender reputation helps ensure that emails are delivered to the inbox and not bounced.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that bounce rate can be calculated by dividing the total number of bounced emails by the total number of emails sent, and then multiplying by 100 to express it as a percentage.