What are best-in-class email acceptance, hard bounce, and block bounce rates for SaaS companies?

Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests that a SaaS provider sending on behalf of multiple clients should not get bogged down in "industry specific" metrics from any vendor and instead take a holistic approach to sending practices across their entire user base in the context of protecting organisational sending reputation.

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares his opinion that by viewing their collective performance they can view their own performance holistically within the context of other providers that share the same infrastructure. Asking how my customers and I compare to other service providers on the same underlying infrastructure is a reasonable question to ask.

Email marketer from Litmus shares that email authentication methods, such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, play a crucial role in improving email deliverability and sender reputation. Implementing these methods can help reduce the likelihood of emails being marked as spam or blocked.

Email marketer from ActiveCampaign explains that a high bounce rate negatively impacts sender reputation, potentially leading to emails being marked as spam or blocked by ISPs. They recommend targeting a bounce rate below 2%.

Email marketer from HubSpot shares tips to maintain good email deliverability by cleaning your list, authenticating email, and avoiding spam triggers.

Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that SaaS providers customers need to aim for high acceptance rates (~98-99%), low bounce rates (~1% or less), and very low complaint rates (~0.05%). Emails may still be routed to spam even after acceptance. He suggests monitoring individual customer metrics and the sending reputation of infrastructure, as issues with one customer can impact others.

Email marketer from Sendinblue answers that complaint rates should ideally be below 0.1%. Exceeding this threshold indicates potential issues with list quality or sending practices.

Email marketer from Neil Patel shares that regularly cleaning your email list and removing invalid email addresses (hard bounces) is crucial for maintaining a good sender reputation and high deliverability rates.

Email marketer from Mailjet shares that a good bounce rate should be below 2%. If your bounce rate is higher than that, you should investigate the cause and take steps to improve it, such as cleaning your email list.

Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests having a consistent way of measuring your own performance against your own historical performance and goals. He says that within a provider, it is effective to measure hard bounces and block bounces and that you can measure across industries for best practices as well.

Expert from Email Geeks states that block bounces should be zero or very low (sub 1%), and hard bounces should range between 2-3% for the first email to an address, then under 1% ongoing.

Expert from Email Geeks says deliverability metrics provide the best numbers we can get, but they’re also inherently inaccurate.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that email acceptance, hard bounce, and block bounce rates are useful metrics, but they are often limited by the data that is available to the sender and by the differences of how each mailbox provider defines them.

Expert from Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins, explains that metrics like complaint rates, spam trap hits, and blocklistings are all indicators that mailbox providers use to assess sender reputation. Sustained good sending practices and adherence to best practices are critical for maintaining a positive reputation.

Documentation from Google explains that a spam rate consistently above 0.3% will cause deliverability issues with Gmail, as provided by the Google Postmaster Tools.

Documentation from Amazon Web Services explains that keeping bounce rates below 5% and complaint rates below 0.1% helps maintain a good sender reputation when using Amazon SES. High bounce and complaint rates can lead to account reviews and potential service limitations.

Documentation from RFC Editor explains that hard bounces, also known as permanent negative delivery reports, are indicated by SMTP error codes in the 5xx range, providing a technical perspective on identifying permanent delivery failures.