Email marketers must pay close attention to metrics.

These figures aid in determining the effectiveness of your email marketing. The most essential indicators for marketers are the average email click-through rate, open rate, and conversion rate.

These are excellent markers of the success of your campaign. However, there is one well-known measure that marketers may ignore that may make a significant impact in your email engagement.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate why measuring the average email bounce rate is critical for email marketing campaigns. We’ll also look at the acceptable email bounce rate and give you some pointers on how to enhance this figure in your campaigns.

What does your typical email bounce rate indicate?

The proportion of emails that were not delivered is shown by your average email bounce rate. Your undeliverable emails may be divided into two categories: soft bounces and hard bounces.

Soft bounces are usually just a momentary problem. They may be triggered by an overflowing email inbox or a server problem. Contacts who return a soft bounce should not be deleted from your email list just yet. However, you should keep a watch on them in case of future deliverability issues.

Email marketers are more concerned about hard bounces. Your message will be returned because the email address or domain you are attempting to send to does not exist. This might also mean that your recipient’s server is identifying your email as garbage or spam.

Hard bounces, if left addressed, may have a major influence on your future email marketing operations. Hard bounced email addresses should be promptly deleted from your contact list and never delivered to again.

What is considered an appropriate email bounce rate?

It is quite unusual to have an email campaign with a 100% deliverability rate. Even if you’ve taken every precaution to verify the reliability of your contact list, there are still things beyond your control.

The industry standard for bounced emails is 2%. This implies that for every 100 emails you send, you will get two back. Your bounce rate will often be substantially lower.

Anything between 2% and 5% is noteworthy. It might be a momentary issue that fixes itself with your next email send. If you detect a bounce rate of more than 5%, you must act quickly to resolve the problem.

It’s also worth noting that bounce rates may vary somewhat depending on industry. Just as varied email open rates were seen by industry in 2018, so will bounce rates.

This useful collection of email marketing metrics by industry was prepared by Smart Insights. It covers open and click-through rates, as well as hard and soft bounce data. The construction business has greater bounce rates, but the coupons and daily deals industry has relatively low bounce rates.

Here are five strategies for lowering your average email bounce rate.

1. Make new connections need double opt-in

Requiring a double opt-in is one of the greatest methods to ensure that you are obtaining valid email addresses on your sign-up forms.

Instead of enabling new leads to be added to your list simply by supplying their email addresses, a double opt-in requires them to authenticate the address they gave. This is often accomplished with an automated email sent shortly after they enter their address.

Take a look at this Air Table double opt-in email sample.

This email had just a short paragraph and a link to click in order to validate the customer’s email address. In this case, a CTA button would have sufficed.

Some marketers say that double opt-in might be detrimental to your lead generating efforts. They are not totally incorrect, but the failure rate for double opt-in is around 27%. So, one in every four persons who provide their email addresses will not confirm. This is more than double the failure rate for single opt-in.

However, double opt-in allows you to establish a more engaged email list of contacts who have supplied a valid email address. On a single opt-in form, a lead might easily misspell their email address, causing their email to bounce.

If you value quality above quantity, as you should, double opt-in is your best bet.

2. Clean up your email list on a regular basis

Just because you’re sending to a fantastic email list right now doesn’t imply those contacts will be active a year from now.

In one year, up to 30% of your list might change. Your contacts’ email addresses may be changed or deleted. In the case of B2B clients, they may find a new job or relocate to a different organization. If you attempt to send an email to one of these addresses, you will get a hard bounce.

You may cleanse your lists using a third-party service such as NeverBounce. These services often interface with a wide range of major email providers. They will review your lists to ensure that your contacts have genuine email addresses or domains.

3. Avoid making your email seem spammy

Even if you have a clean email list, your emails may still bounce if they land up in the garbage folders of your contacts.

Spam accounts for more than 53% of all emails sent worldwide. And not all of these letters come from kind Nigerian princes eager to share their fortune. As a result, email service providers are taking proactive measures to filter out these sorts of communications for their clients. These emails are usually sent to the trash or spam folder and are concealed from the main inbox.

Here are a few methods for getting your emails past spam filters:

• Check for damaged pictures and formatting errors in your email.
• In your footer, provide your contact information and address.
• Words connected with spam should be avoided.

When an email is not intended to provide the greatest possible user experience, it is more likely to be categorized as garbage or spam and to bounce.

4. Divide your email lists based on involvement

Some email service providers include open and click-through rates into their spam filters. It isn’t a significant element, but it does play a role. Consider segmenting your lists based on engagement and marketing first to your most engaged clients.

This strategy should result in enhanced statistics. This will assist in demonstrating to email service providers that your messages pass the engagement test. Unless you have a very high unsubscribe or spam rate, this should help decrease bounces.

5. Do not use a bought email list

Don’t even consider it. Using a bought list guarantees a spike in bounced emails.

Because the contacts on a bought list gave you no authorization to communicate to them, they may label your emails as spam. If you get too many spam complaints, that domain may ban all of your emails.

You also risk breaking CAN-SPAM rules if you use bought lists and distribute to people who did not opt in. Your emails may be banned as a result, which will have an immediate effect on your open, click-through, and conversion rates. Getting your IP address removed from the blacklist may be a time-consuming and stressful procedure. You might potentially face steep penalties of up to $41,000 each email sent.

Furthermore, most email applications will not enable you to transmit to bought lists, so you’re essentially wasting your time and money.