How to Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate wrecks deliverability and reputation. Here's exactly what causes bounces and how to drive the number down.
TL;DR
Bounces come from bad addresses, missing authentication and reputation issues. Verify emails, suppress hard bounces, authenticate, and warm up. Keep hard bounces under ~2%.
What counts as a bounce
A bounce is a failed delivery. As covered in bounce processing, hard bounces are permanent (bad address) and soft bounces are temporary (mailbox full, throttled).
Why high bounce rates hurt
Mailbox providers read high bounces as a sign of a purchased or stale list — a classic spammer trait. It directly damages reputation and can get you filtered.
How to reduce bounces
- Verify addresses at signup with double opt-in.
- Validate your list with an email-verification tool before big sends.
- Suppress hard bounces immediately — never re-send to them.
- Practise list hygiene — prune inactives regularly.
- Authenticate with SPF/DKIM/DMARC so valid mail isn't rejected.
What's a good bounce rate?
Keep hard bounces under 2%. Above that, pause and clean your list before continuing.
Soft bounce handling
Retry soft bounces on a sensible schedule, but suppress an address after repeated soft failures — it may be dead.
AutoPMTA auto-suppresses hard bounces and surfaces bounce trends so your rate stays low. View plans.
Key takeaways
- Hard bounces are permanent — suppress them immediately.
- Verify at signup and validate lists before big sends.
- High bounces signal a dirty list and hurt reputation.
- Target a hard bounce rate under 2%.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good email bounce rate?+
Keep your hard bounce rate under 2%. Higher rates signal list quality problems to mailbox providers and can damage your sender reputation and deliverability.
What causes emails to bounce?+
Hard bounces are caused by invalid or non-existent addresses; soft bounces by temporary issues like full mailboxes, server downtime or throttling. Missing authentication can also cause rejections.
How do I lower my bounce rate?+
Use double opt-in, validate your list before sending, suppress hard bounces immediately, practise regular list hygiene, and set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication.