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Email marketing

Bounce Rate (Email)

Bounce rate is the percentage of sent emails that could not be delivered, split between hard bounces (permanent failures) and soft bounces (temporary failures).

A hard bounce means the address does not exist or has permanently rejected mail — invalid mailbox, blocked domain, or terminated account. Hard-bounced contacts should be suppressed immediately so you do not keep sending to dead addresses.

A soft bounce is a temporary failure: full mailbox, recipient server down, message too large, or a transient rate limit. Most platforms retry soft bounces a few times before giving up. Persistent soft bounces should be treated as hard bounces after a threshold (typically 3–5 attempts).

Sustained bounce rates over 2% will damage your sender reputation. The fix is list hygiene: never buy lists, always use double opt-in for sign-ups, and run a re-engagement campaign on inactive subscribers every 90 days. A high bounce rate after a list import is the single biggest unforced error in email marketing.

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Related terms

  • Deliverability

    Deliverability is the rate at which sent emails reach the recipient's inbox rather than the spam folder, bouncing, or being silently dropped by the receiving server.

  • Sender Reputation

    Sender reputation is the score that inbox providers assign to a sending domain and IP, used to decide whether new mail from that source goes to the inbox, the spam folder, or is rejected outright.

  • Double Opt-In

    Double opt-in is the practice of requiring a new email subscriber to confirm their address by clicking a link in a verification email before they are added to your active sending list.

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