Regarding email marketing, a clean, verified list is more valuable than a large, sloppy one. Bounces are more than a waste of time. They damage your sender reputation, reduce deliverability, and undermine your entire marketing performance.
Without your emails ending up in inboxes, your campaigns cannot work. The good news? By properly cleaning your email list, you can greatly reduce bounces. Here’s how.
Tips for Decreasing Bounce Rates on Your Email Marketing
Interestingly, you can fix a bad reputation or build a new one if you follow the right steps. Below are some practical ways to lessen bounce rates.
Understand why emails bounce.
You must know the reasons behind bounced emails before cleaning your list. There are two main types:
- Hard bounces: Irreversible delivery failures due to invalid or non-existent email addresses.
- Soft bounces: One-time problems such as an inbox overload or a server crash.
The hardest bounces are the most risky. They inform email service providers (ESPs) that your list is poorly maintained, leading to low sender scores and increased spam.
Eliminate invalid and bogus email addresses
An invalid email usually belongs to a miswritten email, spamming, or an old email list. One can give an example of typing gamil.com rather than gmail.com. These mistakes accumulate and eventually bloat your bounce rate.
The answer is to use an email verification tool that automatically identifies and removes invalid or fake addresses.
These are used to cross-verify domain validity, mailbox existence, and syntax correctness to produce the most accurate list of actual, active users.
Get rid of role-based and disposable emails
Possibly, addresses such as info@company.com or support@domain.com may appear valid, yet they are not specific to a person. Role-based email is more likely to be forwarded to multiple people and does not integrate well with marketing messages, leading to low open rates and spam complaints.
Likewise, temporary and dissolvable emails (generated by sites such as Guerrilla Mail) must be eliminated, as they have a short lifespan and often result in hard bounces. It is best to filter out such addresses regularly to maintain a fresh, responsive list.
Subscribers are to be confirmed using double opt-in
Double opt-in will ensure that all subscribers are interested in listening to you. Upon registration, the user receives a confirmation email requesting confirmation of their subscription.
This additional measure will eliminate spam, typing errors, and bogus sign-ups from your list. It might lower your initial subscriber count a bit, but it has an enormous impact on deliverability, engagement, and long-term confidence.
Segment and win over inactive subscribers
Not everyone added to your list remains active. Others switch jobs, fade off old inboxes, or get bored with what they are writing. Emailing dormant customers will increase bounces and spam.
Begin by splitting active contacts, the ones that were not opened or clicked within the last 90 to 180 days. Then, do a re-engagement campaign with a greeting message such as:
“We’ve missed you! Would you like to keep updated with us anymore?
If they are not responsive, remove them from your primary list. It is preferable to have a small but attentive audience than a huge but inactive one.
Clean and check your list regularly
List cleaning is not a one-time affair but a habit. The most effective way to do this is to check your email list three to six times, depending on the frequency of gathering new contacts.
Verify compromised email addresses automatically to reduce or eliminate the risks of harmful emails being sent to the receiver through automated verification tools that may be linked to your CRM or email marketing service. This permanent strategy makes your bounce rate low and guarantees regular inbox placement.
Conclusion
A high bounce rate in your email is not an excuse to eliminate your email list; it’s an excuse to clean it. You will increase deliverability and protect your sender reputation by eliminating invalid contacts, verifying new sign-ups, and keeping your audience engaged, thereby maximizing ROI. Finally, checking an electronic mail for validity is very important.
