Bounced email addresses are like a nightmare for any email marketer. The high number of email addresses in your email list will not benefit you if you can't send emails to the client's inbox. Thus it is very important to understand the Email Bounce Meaning and learn how to stop them.
In this post, I will explain all you need to know about from email bounce rate meaning; email bounce definition; What are the six types of email bounces? To how to reduce email bounces?. So let's get started right away.
Email Bounce Meaning
When we send an email, it goes through our mail server and reaches the client's mail server, where the client's mail server decides whether to forward it to the client or not.
Sometimes in this process, if the client's mail server detects some problems. Then it is sent back to the sender's mail server. And this process of sending back emails is known as bounce.
Email bounce is a delivery failure of an email to reach the inbox that occurs when the client's mail server detects some errors.
Email Bounce Rate is the percentage of emails not delivered to the client. You can calculate the email bounce rate using the email bounce rate formula.
Email bounce rate calculation formula: (Number of bounces / Number of sent emails) × 100
For example, if you have sent 1,000 email addresses and 100 of them bounced back, then the email bounce rate you got is 10%, which implies you need to work on your email list.
Why is email bounce rate important?
If you get high bounce rates, your sender's reputation will decrease, and a bad reputation means low email deliverability. The poorer your reputation gets higher are the chances of email getting delivered to the spam folder.
Email marketing services like GetResponse don't allow high bounce rates. If you cross their limits, then you may get blocked or suspended.
Therefore, you should know the bounce email meaning, bounce rates and work on them. And keep your email list clean and organized.
Types of Email Bounces:
- Soft Bounce
- Hard Bounce
- Transient Bounce
- Block Bounce
- Abuse Bounce
- General Bounce
Soft Bounce:
It is a temporary delivery failure. It usually occurs because of some problems on the client's side. Such as his mailbox being full, the server being down, or offline. You can try after some time to send the email back, and it may get delivered if the problem is solved.
Hard Bounce:
It is a permanent delivery failure. It occurs because the client's email address doesn't exist or is no longer in use.
Transient Bounce:
It is also a temporary email delivery failure, but it is still trying to get delivered. You, as a sender, have to do nothing after sending the email. It will automatically get delivered after the problem is solved.
Block Bounce:
Block bounce occurs when the client has blocked the domain or IP address of the sender. In this case, the client's server will reject the email and send it back to the sender.
Fraud/ Abuse Bounce:
It is a bounced back email sent to the sender by the Internet Service Providers' loops in case the client marks the email as spam.
General Bounce:
In the general bounce, the email is sent back to the sender without an understandable reason for the bounce back.
After understanding email bounce back meaning, we will now learn how to stop email bounces.
Five ways to reduce Email Bounce Rate:
- Validate your email list
- Use Double opt-in for new subscribers
- Don't use a free domain address to send emails
- Use CAPTCHA in your sign-up form
- Don't send Spammy Emails
Validate your email list
It all starts with building an email list, and it is necessary to have a clean email list to become a successful email marketer.
Email validation ensures that the email addresses in your email list are valid and exist to get an important email delivered. Hence, it is more likely that you will receive hard bounces if you run an email campaign without email validation.
Make sure as time passes, contacts in your email list may likely change or delete their email addresses, and if you try to send an email to them, it may result in hard bounces. Hence even after building a clean email list, it is essential to validate your email list regularly.
Doing email validation at regular intervals will remove these undeliverable email addresses and reduce your bounce rate. According to the reports, 30% of the email list may change in one year due to this process.
Use Double opt-in for new subscribers
An email list must consist of engaging and active subscribers. The list made with double opt-in fulfills this need by not allowing unreal and inactive subscribers in the email list. Hence decreases the email bounce rate and increases the email deliverability.
Double opt-in is a 2 step process in which users have to fill up the opt-in form to become a subscriber and confirm the subscription by clicking on the verification link sent to the email used to subscribe.
Apart from advantages, email double opt-in also has a disadvantage. It is a time-consuming process, hence is more likely that people won't complete it. After filling up the opt-in forum, people may forget to click on the verification link, which will decrease the sign-ups. According to reports, it reduces the initial sign-ups by 20% in the email campaign. But an email list of 300 subscribers with 250 active subscribers is always better than an email list of 1000 subscribers with 100 active subscribers.
Don't use a free domain address to send emails
Using a free domain address like Google and Hotmail to send emails looks more unprofessional than sending them through a custom-owned domain. Having a custom domain of a business shows its reputation and builds trust between consumers.
Also, it is less probable that an email sent through a custom domain will end up in a spam folder. If you send an email by a free domain address, it might fail the DMARC check process, which will result in a bounce-back or ending up in a spam folder.
Use CAPTCHA in your sign-up form
Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Distinguish Robots from People (Captcha) is a confirmation test used to check whether a person is real or not. It decides whether the client signing up to your email list is a real person or a bot. Having a captcha in the sign-up form will ensure that there will be no bot account in your email list.
Don't send Spammy Emails
Even after following the given ways to reduce bounces, your email may still bounce back if it ends up in the subscriber's spam folder. Statistics show that about one in five sent emails ends up in the spam folder.
You might not send spammy emails purposely, but spam filters may automatically send the emails in the spam folder if it consists of:
- Spam triggered phrases like a Cash bonus, No fees, Limited time, Cheap, Loans, Sales!!
- Long or short images
- Too many colorful and different fonts text
- Broken Html code formating
- Links to inadequate websites
Also, add the unsubscribe button and contact information in the footer of the email to make sure that it is not ended up in the spam folder and gets bounced.
These all are the Promotional Emails captured by the spam filter of Gmail.What is the average bounce rate for email marketing?
Even after doing all the necessary steps to reduce email bounces, it is uncommon to have a bounce rate of 0%. So, what are the excepted numbers of emails that will bounce back?
The email bounce rates vary from one industry to another industry. For example, excepted bounce rate for the Computers and Electronics industries lie between 1.02% to 0.70%.
The average maximum bounce rate comparing all the industries is 2%. For example, for every 1000 emails sent by you, 20 emails may bounce back. If you see that you have a bounce rate of more than 2%, then it is worthy of your attention.
Conclusion: Email Bounce Meaning
Email Marketing is useless if you don't learn to stop email bounces. High bounce rates decrease your sender's reputation, which will result in low email deliverability.
An email bounces when the client can't receive the email due to some errors. And Email Bounce Rate is the percentage of emails not delivered to the client. To reduce it, follow the tips and tricks described in the article, and don't forget to implicit the most important step to Validate the Email List before running a campaign.
I hope you have understood the Email bounce meaning. Have any questions? Let us discuss it in our Knowitian Telegram Group or leave a comment below.
Nice article 👍
ReplyDeleteGot to know all types of email bounces and email bounce meaning