Last Updated on July 24, 2022 by Roshan Parihar
If you want to know what is hard bounce rate and how to reduce it, you have come to the right place.
The sender’s reputation is important while sending emails to your subscribers. However, when your emails hard bounced back, you may lose your reputation because of the non-delivery of emails. Hard bounce can damage your reputation as a sender. You need to find them from your email list and remove them as fast as possible.
When mail sending is failed, the mail server will give back an automated delivery failure message. It contains the reason for failure comes from the recipient’s mail server end. If you are an email marketer, it can be a frustrating thing for you.
If the email address of your recipient is not valid, you cannot be able to send emails to them. You should immediately find them and remove them from your email list. To keep your email list healthy and accurate, you need to permanently remove hard bounce emails.
In this post, you will learn what is hard bounce and how you can easily find and remove them from your email lists. You will also get proven ways to reduce hard bounce email addresses. So, let’s start with the question that what is hard bounce.
What is Hard Bounce?
A hard bounce is a permanent email delivery problem because of the invalid email address of the recipient. There can be reasons like the recipient is not a real person, the Domain Name is Invalid, Spamming, etc.
Too many hard bounces can damage your reputation as a sender. If the receiver’s email address is not valid, you should not consider sending email to them again. Your primary goal should be to permanently remove hard bounced emails from your email list.
Affiliate Disclosure: At Tutorialdeep, we believe in transparency for our users. In this blog, there are some referral links. If you signup with these links we will earn some commission at no extra cost to you. We recommend these links because they are our trusted brands.
Many top email sending services (like Sendinblue) automatically add the hard bounced emails to a suppression list. You can easily filter out the hard bounced emails to permanently delete them. They also don’t send the emails again to these suppressed emails. It can help you prevent sending emails to bad email addresses that can harm your reputation.
Reasons for Hard Bounce Rate in Email Marketing
The common reasons for a hard bounce in email marketing are given below:-
- Invalid Email Address: The recipient’s email address is not a valid email address to receive emails.
- Recipient Changed Domain Name: It can be chances that the recipient totally changed their domain to the new domain name. You cannot be able to send emails to email addresses whose domains do not exist.
- Email Address Does Not Exist: If you use a simple form to collect emails from your subscribers, a spam bot can fill the form to give you emails that actually do not exist.
- Spam Filter Blacklisted Your IP: The server at the recipient end may permanently filter out and blacklisted your IP. You cannot be able to send emails to those email addresses.
How to Remove Hard Bounce Emails from Your Email List (2 Quick Ways)
Here are the quick ways to find out the hard bounce emails exist on your emails list and remove them:-
#1: Using Email List Cleaning Services
If you want to clean your email list and remove all your hard-bounced email addresses from your email list, you should consider using the best email list cleaning services. It can help you easily perform validation and verification of your email list to find out the invalid emails.
You easily find out Invalid Emails, Duplicate Emails, Spam Emails, Emails with Invalid MX Records, and many more. Top email list cleaning service (like Debounce) scans each email one by one to filter out the hard bounced emails. After that, you can easily remove them from your email list.
It can also help you keep your email list healthy and accurate to get a high open & click-through rate and high email deliverability rate.
#2: Using Top Rated Email Marketing Platforms
After you send emails to your subscribers, the best email marketing platforms (like Sendinblue) add the hard bounced emails to the suppression list. You can check the report section to filter out the hard bounced emails. After that, you can easily remove them from your email list.
Each time you send an email to your subscribers, these email services continuously monitor each invalid email that gives a hard bounce. It can also blacklist those email addresses and also make sure that they do not send emails to them again.
So, it is the best option to easily find out hard-bounced email addresses and delete them. You can also use these services to easily create an accurate and healthy email list for your business.
How to Avoid or Reduce Hard Bounce Rate (5 Proven Ways)
Here are the 5 proven ways to reduce the hard bounce rate in email marketing:-
1. Using Double Opt-in Signup Forms
The double opt-in form is the form in which the recipient needs to verify their email address to start getting your newsletter. It can give you more accurate and verified email addresses that are ready to receive your emails. These email addresses will not give you a hard bounce rate.
The subscribers have to first fill in their details in the double opt-in signup form. After the user clicks the form submit button, they will get a confirmation email to their email address. The confirmation email contains the verification link to verify the email address.
It only adds the email address, when the user clicks the link. This is a 2-step verification process in which the user has to verify their identity. It also proves that the email address is working to receive emails.
You can collect accurate emails from your audience to create a healthy email list with a double opt-in signup form. The verified email addresses will not come up with a hard bounce.
Read Our Guide ➜ How to Create Double Opt-in Signup Forms
2. Clean Your Email List in a Regular Manner
If you already have an email list of subscribers that gives hard-bounced emails, you should consider using the best email list cleaning services. It can scan all your emails present in your email list for verification and validation.
These email cleaning services come with top features like Check Invalid Emails, Duplicate Emails, Emails with Syntax Errors, Parked Domain Emails, Spam Trap Removal to Remove Spam Records, Identify MX Records of Emails to Find Valid Emails, and Integration with the best email marketing platforms.
To keep your email list more accurate and healthy, it is recommended to use these services every month. You will get more accurate results with the top email list cleaning service like Debounce.
3. Use Top Rated Email Sending Services to Filter Hard Bounced Emails
Top-rated email sending services (like Sendinblue and Constant Contact) help you easily track hard bounced emails with email campaigns. When you send emails to your subscribers, these services will keep tracking of each email and add the hard bounced emails to the suppression list.
You can easily check reports of your email campaigns and filter out the hard bounced emails. After getting the list of hard bounced emails, you can easily remove them from your email list.
These services also blacklisted the hard bounced email address. After blacklisting them, they will never send emails to these blacklisted email addresses in future campaigns. So, these services can help you increase your performance and reputation as a sender.
4. Send Regular Emails to Monitor Delivery
If you have an email list of subscribers, you should consider sending regular emails to them. It can help you create a great reputation among your subscribers and increase engagement. You can also build a great relationship with your subscriber by sending regular emails.
Sending regular emails to your subscribers helps you get more conversions and sales for your business. You can easily understand the need of your subscribers and help them with the products to solve their problems.
Also, there can be a possibility that your working email addresses become invalid because of server failures, the Recipient Changed Domain Name, Recipient Permanently Blacklisted your IP, etc.
Regular sending of emails can easily identify your present email address if become invalid. After getting invalid emails that give a hard bounce, you can remove them from your email list.
5. Don’t Purchase Email List
Purchasing an email list from unauthorized sources can damage your reputation as a sender and gives you a more hard bounce rate. The purchased email list may contain email addresses that are not valid. The audience present in the email list is also not related to your niche.
It can be possible that the purchased email list contains spam email addresses. You cannot easily generate more conversions and sales for your business when the email list is not targeted.
If your email list gives no conversions, it is totally waste of time and money. It doesn’t matter whether you have a small email list or a larger email list. A small email list with more conversions can help you generate more revenue for your business.
To generate more conversions, you need an email list that is targeted and related to your niche. It is recommended to build your own email list of subscribers from scratch.
Read Our Guide ➜ How To Build An Email List From Scratch (3 Easy Steps)
FAQS on Hard Bounce in Email Marketing
Q1. What Causes Hard Bounce?
Answer: A hard bounce causes when the email address of the recipient is not valid to receive emails. It can be possible that the email address does not exist because of the Syntax Error, Recipient Changed Their Domain Name, Recipient Services Blacklisted your IP, etc.
Q2. What is Hard Bounce VS Soft Bounce?
Answer: Hard bounce is the permanent bounce problem in which the recipient’s email address is invalid or does not exist. The main reason of hard bounce emails are Invalid Email Addresses, Syntax Errors, Changed Domain Names, Blacklisted IPs, etc.
A soft bounce is the temporary bounce problem on the recipient’s side. The reasons for a soft bounce are Inbox Quota is Full, Temporary Server is Down, Large Message Size, etc. The recipient is valid but is not available currently to receive emails.
Q3. How to Find Bounced Emails?
Answer: If you using top email marketing services (like Sendinblue), you can easily find bounced emails. You need to just create email campaigns and send emails to your subscribers. After that, go to the reports section and open your campaign report to filter out the bounce emails. You can also easily find out whether it’s a soft bounce or a hard bounce.
Q4. Should I Delete Hard Bounces?
Answer: Yes, you should consider deleting hard bounce emails immediately after getting them. It can damage your reputation as a sender and it’s good to remove them from your email list.
Conclusion
Now, you know what is hard bounce in email marketing. To keep your email list healthy, it is recommended to remove all hard bounce emails. Sender reputation is important for email marketers and hard bounced emails can damage your reputation.
You can easily improve your deliverability rate and open & click-through rate by removing the hard bounced emails. Top email marketing platforms come with all the tools to easily find out the hard bounced emails and remove them.
If you want to keep your email list healthy and accurate, it is recommended to use the best email list cleaning services once a month. It can help you regularly perform verification and validation of your email list to clean bounced emails.
You May Also Like to Read