What is Bounce Rate?
Email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that couldn't be delivered to recipients, categorized as hard bounces (permanent failures) or soft bounces (temporary issues).
Bounce rate measures the percentage of your emails that fail to reach recipients. When an email bounces, the receiving server rejects it and sends back an error message explaining why. Bounces are categorized into two types.
Hard bounces are permanent delivery failures. The email address doesn't exist, the domain is invalid, or the recipient has blocked your sender. These addresses should be immediately removed from your list—continuing to send to them damages your sender reputation.
Soft bounces are temporary failures. The recipient's mailbox might be full, the server might be temporarily unavailable, or the message might be too large. Soft bounces can retry automatically, but addresses that repeatedly soft bounce should eventually be removed.
Why Bounce Rate Matters
High bounce rates signal to email providers that you're not maintaining your list properly, which damages your sender reputation and hurts deliverability for all your emails. Industry best practice is to keep bounce rates below 2%. Rates above 5% can trigger spam filters or even get you blacklisted.
How Ark Handles Bounce Rate
Ark automatically processes bounces and adds hard-bounced addresses to your suppression list, preventing future sends that would hurt your reputation. Our dashboard shows real-time bounce rates and trends, and our API returns detailed bounce information so you can update your systems accordingly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between hard and soft bounces?
Hard bounces are permanent—the address doesn't exist or can never receive email. Soft bounces are temporary—the mailbox is full or the server is down. Hard bounces should be immediately removed; soft bounces can be retried but should be removed after multiple failures.
What's an acceptable bounce rate?
Keep your bounce rate below 2% to maintain good sender reputation. Rates between 2-5% need attention. Rates above 5% indicate serious list quality issues that can damage your deliverability.
How do I reduce my bounce rate?
Use double opt-in to verify email addresses, regularly clean your list by removing inactive subscribers, remove hard bounces immediately, and validate email addresses at signup using email verification services.
Should I remove soft bounces from my list?
Not immediately, but track them. If an address soft bounces multiple times over several sends, it should be removed. Ark automatically handles this by suppressing addresses after repeated soft bounces.
Related Terms
Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is the ability to successfully deliver emails to recipients' inboxes rather tha...
Suppression List
A suppression list is a database of email addresses that should not receive emails, including bounce...
Spam Trap
A spam trap is an email address used to identify spammers, either recycled from abandoned accounts o...
Ready to improve your email deliverability?
Ark handles bounce rate and more automatically. Start sending in 5 minutes.