22Nov 23 Best Tips To Reduce Email Bounce Rate & Nurture Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

You can create a wonderful email marketing campaign for your ad campaign but it can still end up not being opened by a majority of your target audience. In this lengthy process, you end up losing a great deal of time and money.

A bounce rate ranging higher than 2 percent will set your entire email marketing strategy for failure. In fact, as per the marketing standard, it is important to have a bounce rate of as little as 0% and a marketer should ensure that the number does not exceed 2 percent.

With the help of a few time-tested strategies, you can create a foolproof plan to improve email deliverability and significantly reduce bounce rates.  

Let us first find out what is bounce rate, how bounce rate leaves an impact on your business, and the steps you can take to reduce it.

What Is A Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is a measure of emails that do not land in the recipient’s inbox. Bounce rates are classified into two broad categories –

• Hard Bounce
• Soft Bounce

Both these bounce rates have a different impact on your entire email marketing strategy. However, The basic idea will remain the same i.e. – the recipient will not receive the email at all.

Hard Bounce Rate

A hard bounce occurs when there is an issue with the email address. The email address may be wrong, invalid, or non-existent. When there is a hard bounce, it means that there is no way for your email to make it to an inbox. In case you have a few permanent bounces, you must ensure to remove such email addresses from your list.

Soft Bounce Rate

When an email is not delivered to a recipient’s inbox due to some temporary glitch or issue, it is called a soft bounce.

A soft bounce can be caused when your recipient’s inbox is full or there is a server issue. Your email has a high bounce possibility when it is too long. In case of a soft bounce, there are chances that your audience may receive the email. Your email service provider will continue to try to help you deliver your message. As soon as the temporary issue is fixed, your email will be surely delivered.

If the email continues to bounce, we suggest you remove the email address from your list.

Reasons to Avoid Email Bounces

The real purpose behind any form of marketing is to spread the word. You want your target audience to open and read your email. That is the primary step to getting conversions. When a section of your target audience does not receive the email in the first place, the whole purpose is defeated.

Bounce rate can lead to the following:

1. Loss of money – you pay a certain amount to email services to send a dedicated number of emails to a dedicated number of people. If your bounce rate is high, it could mean that your investment will not yield any results.
2. Loss of time – Time is money. When you put a lot of time energy and effort into an email marketing campaign that does not procure the results you envision, it is a waste of valuable time.
3. Impact on email deliverability – when you have a higher bounce rate, a message is automatically triggered to Internet Service Providers that you are a spammer, and messages from your source should most likely be treated as such. Therefore, it will result in your email being dropped in the spam folder which a user does not prefer to read.

How to Attain a 0% Bounce Rate?

A 0% bounce rate is a figure all brands and companies wish to achieve.

However, it is worth noting that achieving the perfect score of 0 percent is not practical. It is because countless factors are simply out of your direct control. We have listed a few such factors below:

• A Full Mailbox: When your recipient’s email address lacks a storage space for more emails to come.
• Emai providers issues: The recipients on your list preferably choose other email providers so you will not have any influence on the third-party email providers.
• Glitches: Sometimes there are unpredictable and sudden glitches in the system due to which the email bounces.

Due to the above factors, the benchmark assigned for bounce rate is at a flexibility of 2%. If you aim to keep your target at 0% you can manage to crawl as near as it gets to the ideal number. 

4-Step Guide to Reduce Bounce Rate

As we have discussed the risks of rising bounce rates, we need to learn sustainable and reliable ways to keep bounce rates off the table. Let us look at a few curated steps that will help you successfully send your emails to a majority of your target recipient list.

Without further ado, let’s begin:

Step 1: Trim Your Email List

Your email list may contain a wide selection of addresses which may not be valid for several reasons. Before you run an email marketing campaign, you must make it a point to eliminate all the possible invalid contacts from your list.

You can increase your email deliverability rate to new heights by incorporating an email validator. It is a wonderful tool that identifies all the invalid email addresses and eliminates them in the first instance.

The tool is highly efficient and can help you obtain data for up to 100,000 contacts within an hour.

Once you have formed an email database, it will not remain valid year after year. It is very important to check your email database 4 times a year to keep your data fresh and up to date.

Step 2: Build an Email Validation API

An email validation API will prevent your system from collecting bad data again. It is an additional shield that safeguards the overall health of your email list.

An API works simply. As soon as you sign up with the API, it immediately blocks the invalid emails from infiltrating right away. For example, if an invalid address falls into your contact list, the API will generate a prompt requesting you to check the email address or enter the right one. In addition to this attribute, API bots are adept at blocking fake sign-ups and bots to help you check email deliverability higher.

Step 3: Eliminate Unengaged Subscribers

It takes a lot of time and effort to build a credible email list. Therefore, it is common for the brands to cling to their email lists.

It stems from the idea that a bigger list creates an opportunity for a higher ROI. The more your audience the better your prospects.

Having a wide section of audience may contribute to expanding your reach but keeping inactive users in your list can have a negative impact. Recipients who do not open your email despite all your marketing efforts will most likely trigger ISPs to suggest that your content is not useful. As a result, your emails will be pushed to the spam list.

People who do not open your messages at all may have probably abandoned that address.

If you aim to keep your bounce rate on the lower side, you must keep your disengaged users out of your email list.

Cleanse your email list every three to six months to keep your list free from disengaged and invalid content. Keep your email list small, and concise so that your email list is vibrant and responsive.

Step 4: Permissions and Double Opt-in

Effective email marketing campaign requires a lot of permissions. For instance, your email contact list should agree to receive emails from you. With the stringent privacy laws, it is important to take care of your audiences’ preferences. When a person signs up with your email, they do not by default permit you to add them to your list. As a brand, it is unethical to add addresses from users who simply signed up to your website or service. You will have to formally ask a contact if they prefer to receive messages from your brand.

Also, you can choose to adopt the double opt-in sign-up method which will help you reduce the bounce rate to a great extent.

As per the double opt-in sign-up method, users will need to click a link present in the automated email triggered to their email address upon an action taken by a recipient. If a user does not click on this link, they will not be added to your contact list.

Using the double opt-in, you can significantly lower the fake sign-up instances and create a thorough and engaged email list.

Only a few clicks in the setting will do the trick for you.

Wrapping Up

Email marketing service is an excellent way to reach your audience. People arrive at their inbox with a seriousness and a mindset to check what is useful to them. If you are at the right place and right time, chances are that your campaign will perform beyond your expectations.

Bounce rates can prohibit you from achieving your goals. Therefore, it is important to reduce them to get the rates as low as 0%

Adopting the right steps will help you lower your bounce rate, maximize your output, and generate a more impactful buzz.

The right technology will help you curtail the spiking bounce rates with much ease. There are tools to help you identify inactive email databases and eliminate all dormant contacts from your list.

Are you curious how you can build a strong email marketing foundation when your bounce rate is surprisingly closer to 0%? Book a free consultation with our experts at UsePerWish today!