How to reduce your email bounce rate
By the PickusMail teamUpdated 25 October 20267 min read
Short answer
To reduce your email bounce rate, verify your list before every campaign, remove hard bounces immediately and never send to them again, use double opt-in on signup forms, re-verify contacts older than about three months, and authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Aim to keep bounces under 2%.
What the bounce rate measures
The bounce rate is the share of sent emails that the receiving servers refused. A hard bounce is permanent, for example an address that does not exist. A soft bounce is temporary, for example a full mailbox. See hard bounce vs soft bounce for the details.
Bounces matter beyond the lost emails. Mailbox providers watch how often a sender hits addresses that do not exist, and a high rate is a classic sign of a poorly kept or purchased list. The result is more of your mail going to spam, including to your real customers. Sending services such as Amazon SES also review and can pause accounts whose bounce rate stays high.
8 steps to reduce your bounce rate
- Verify the list before every campaign. Run the list through an email verifier and remove invalid addresses before you send.
- Remove hard bounces immediately. An address that hard-bounced once will bounce again. Suppress it permanently.
- Use double opt-in. Ask new subscribers to confirm their address by clicking a link, so typos never enter the list.
- Catch typos at the signup form. Check addresses in real time when people type them and suggest corrections such as gmial.com to gmail.com.
- Re-verify old contacts. Re-check contacts you have not emailed for about three months, because addresses go bad over time.
- Handle catch-all and role addresses separately. Send to risky addresses only when you know the contact, in their own segment.
- Authenticate your domain. Publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC records so receiving servers trust your mail.
- Never buy or scrape lists. Purchased lists contain dead addresses and spam traps that drive bounces and complaints.
Why lists go bad even when you collect them honestly
People change jobs, companies change domains, and free mailboxes are closed after long inactivity. Every list decays a little each month, so a list that was clean a year ago will bounce today. That is why verification is a habit, not a one-off job.
A simple routine
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| At signup | Real-time check through an email verification API, plus double opt-in. |
| Before each campaign | Verify any contacts added or not checked since the last send. |
| Every three months | Re-verify the whole list. |
| After each campaign | Suppress hard bounces and complaints permanently. |
How PickusMail helps
PickusMail email verification checks each address with a real SMTP conversation and gives a plain reason for every result, so you know which ones to remove. Addresses we cannot resolve are marked unknown and never charged. If you send through PickusMail bulk email, every contact is verified before sending, and bounces and complaints are suppressed automatically.
Questions people ask
What is a good email bounce rate?
Under 2% is healthy for most senders, and under 1% is very good. Above about 5%, mailbox providers and sending services start treating your mail with suspicion.
Do soft bounces count toward the bounce rate?
Many tools report them separately. Soft bounces are temporary, but an address that soft-bounces on several campaigns in a row should be treated like a hard bounce and removed.
How often should I clean my email list?
Verify before any large send, and re-verify the whole list at least every three months. Lists collected at events or from older systems decay faster.
Check your list before you send
PickusMail verifies every address with a real SMTP check and tells you why, in plain words. Unknown results are never charged. Start with 100 free credits.