What is the Bounce Rate for Email?

The email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to the recipient. A high bounce rate damages the reputation of your sending domain and harms your deliverability structurally.

Hard bounce versus soft bounce

A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure: the email address does not exist, has been deleted or has blocked you. Remove hard bounces from your list immediately. A soft bounce is temporary: the inbox is full or the mail server is temporarily offline. After several soft bounces, an address is usually removed from your list automatically.

Keeping your email bounce rate low

Validate email addresses at opt-in with double opt-in. Keep your lists clean by removing inactive contacts regularly. Warm up new sending domains with email warm-up to build trust with mail servers.

Bounce rate and spam score

A high bounce rate raises your domain’s spam score and hurts your inbox placement. A bounce rate above 2 percent is a serious signal to improve your list hygiene straight away.

What is an acceptable bounce rate for email?

Below 2 percent for marketing email. Below 3 percent for cold email sequences.

How do I verify email addresses at scale?

With tools such as NeverBounce, ZeroBounce or Bouncer, before you send your campaigns. More at developers.google.com/search.