Keep your bounce rate low

Who this is for: anyone sending at volume, or warming up a new domain, who wants bounces close to zero.

Why bounces matter

A bounce is an email that could not be delivered, usually because the mailbox does not exist. Mailbox providers count bounces against your sending domain. A bounce rate above about 2% is a warning sign; above 5% your emails start going to spam, including to perfectly good addresses. Cold email lists bounce far more than that if they are not checked.

The routine

1. Clean the file before you upload

Remove duplicates, empty rows and obvious typos. Block clients, partners and competitors on the do-not-email list. See Prepare a great lead file.

2. Verify on import

Tick Verify these emails after import on every upload. Plan big lists a day ahead (see Why big lists take time).

3. Retry the Unknowns

When the run finishes, click Verify again and pick Only leads not checked yet. That re-checks only the Unknown leads, and most come back with a clear answer.

4. Remove the Invalids

Clean up with Invalid ticked. See Clean up a list.

5. Send in two waves

Splitting the waves tells you exactly where bounces come from, and keeps your riskiest addresses away from a fresh domain. See Choose which addresses a campaign emails.

6. Re-check old lists

Addresses go stale: people change jobs and companies close mailboxes. Before re-using a list older than about three months, run Verify again with Check every lead again.

7. Let bounces block themselves

Every address that bounces is added to the do-not-email list for you (reason Bounced), so it is never emailed again by any campaign.

Extra habits of low-bounce senders

• Prefer company domains over free mailboxes for business outreach. Yahoo and AOL can never be confirmed.
• Be wary of a list that is mostly catch-all. If most of a list’s Risky results say The domain accepts every address, send to a small sample first and watch the bounces.
• Fix suggested typos at the source. When the verifier says Did you mean …?, correct the address in your spreadsheet and re-upload, rather than emailing the typo.
• Slow down new mailboxes. Verification removes bad addresses; warm-up and low daily limits protect the reputation of new mailboxes.

Next step

Make every email worth reading: Write prompts that convert.