Email Marketing Term
What is Bounce Rate?
The percentage of emails that could not be delivered to recipients' inboxes.
Bounce rate measures delivery failures. There are two types:
**Hard bounces** are permanent failures - invalid email addresses, closed accounts, or blocked domains. These addresses should be immediately removed from your list.
**Soft bounces** are temporary failures - full inboxes, server issues, or messages too large. ESPs typically retry soft bounces before marking them as failed.
A healthy bounce rate is under 2%. Higher rates damage sender reputation and deliverability. Purchased lists often have 20%+ bounce rates, which can get you blacklisted.
Examples
- Hard bounce: "Address does not exist"
- Soft bounce: "Mailbox full, try again later"
- Bounce rate over 5% triggers spam filters
Tips for Bounce Rate
- ✓Use double opt-in to verify email addresses
- ✓Clean your list regularly (every 6 months)
- ✓Never purchase email lists
- ✓Remove hard bounces immediately
Related Terms
Test Your Subject Lines
Put your email marketing knowledge into practice. Analyze your subject lines for free.
Try the Subject Line Tester