Bounces and complaints are essential indicators for email senders, providing insights into the performance and health of their email campaigns.
Bounces occur when an email fails to reach its intended recipient due to various reasons. There are two types of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces.
Hard Bounces
Hard Bounces happen when the email is permanently rejected because the recipient's address is invalid or doesn’t exist anymore.
For instance, if you send an email to an address that has been deactivated, it will result in a hard bounce.
Aim for a hard bounce rate below 0.5%. High hard bounce rates can significantly impact sender reputation and deliverability.
Soft Bounces
Soft Bounces, on the other hand, are temporary issues preventing email delivery, such as a full inbox or a server being down.
For example, if you send an email to someone whose mailbox is temporarily full, it might soft bounce.
Keeping the soft bounce rate below 3% is generally recommended. While soft bounces are often temporary, consistently high rates might indicate underlying issues.
Monitoring bounce rates is crucial because consistently high bounce rates can negatively impact sender reputation and deliverability. It's important to regularly clean your email list to remove invalid or inactive addresses and reduce bounce rates.
Spam complaints
Spam complaints are registered when recipients mark an email as spam or junk. They signify that the recipient did not find the content relevant or solicited and wanted it removed from their inbox.
For instance, if you send an email newsletter and recipients consistently mark it as spam, it increases your complaint rate. High complaint rates can severely affect sender reputation and deliverability, leading to emails being filtered directly to spam folders or even blocking the sender's domain. Ideally, maintain a complaint rate below 0.1%. Going above this threshold could negatively impact sender reputation and deliverability
Remember, these numbers can vary based on different factors such as industry, audience, and email content. It's crucial to continuously monitor and optimize based on your specific campaign performance and audience engagement.
Both bounces and complaints serve as critical indicators for email marketers.
High bounce rates might signal issues with data quality or hygiene, while high complaint rates might suggest problems with email content or frequency.
Monitoring and addressing these indicators promptly are key to maintaining a healthy sender reputation and ensuring better deliverability of future emails.
Do you need additional help?
If you have any additional questions about email deliverability, please contact us at hello@edrone.me