Is it still worth investing in email marketing if your bounce rates are high?
Social media platforms and search engines may be the best channels to get your brand or product discovered. However, when it comes to the consideration stage, emails are the ideal channels to keep them engaged and nudge them closer to making a purchase. So, yes, investing in email marketing is still worthwhile.
No matter how great your content is, it won’t reach potential customers if your emails never reach their inbox. What should you do then? Stop the bounce.
Why do bounce rates matter?
According to the latest report by Datareportal , 75% of internet users open their emails at least once a month. Statista also reveals that 52% of marketing professionals report improvement in their email marketing ROIs. These numbers suggest that email remains an effective marketing channel. But if your bounce rates are high, you’re missing out on higher returns on your marketing efforts.
Simply put, bounce rates measure how many of your emails fail to reach the recipient’s inbox. High bounce rates can harm your sender’s reputation, which may result in more of your emails being filtered into spam folders or not reaching their intended audience at all.
Keep bounce rates low with real solutions for email deliverability. Here are some simple and easy-to-implement strategies to make sure your emails get delivered to the right inboxes.
Effective strategies for better email deliverability
1. Clean your list regularly.
If your list includes invalid, duplicate, or disposable addresses, some of your emails are likely getting bounced or sent straight to spam. When this happens a lot, email providers can flag your email address as suspicious and blacklist it.
So, make sure you regularly check your list and remove such addresses. Tools like VerifiedEmail can help you do this automatically, so your list always stays clean and up-to-date. The less junk on your list, the fewer emails bounce back, and the better your deliverability.
2. Enable real-time email verification.
A more proactive approach that minimizes the hassle of having to remove fake or invalid email addresses from your list is to enable real-time verification. When someone signs up, you can instantly verify their email to make sure that it is real and active. This stops fake addresses from sneaking into your list.
While it sounds complex, real-time verification is easy to implement. For example, you can integrate VerifiedEmail’s verification widget into your signup forms and use reCAPTCHA at the point of collection. As a result, you can block bots or fake users right when they try to sign up.
3. Double Opt-In Process
Double opt-in makes sure that the person who signed up actually wants your emails. After subscribing to your emails, they have to confirm their intention to subscribe by clicking a link on the confirmation email.
This process cuts down on fake or temporary emails and makes sure only engaged people get added to your list. It also means better deliverability because you’re working with a more interested crowd.
4. Monitor and remove hard bounces.
Hard bounces are the worst kind of bounce. They happen when an email can’t be delivered because the email address is malformed or non-existent. When you have a lot of hard bounces, your reputation as a sender can take a hit.
To avoid being blacklisted or getting flagged as a bad sender, track your bounce metrics and immediately remove email addresses that cause hard bounces. The fewer bounces, the better your reputation and the better your email deliverability over time.
5. Implement email authentication protocols.
This step is a little technical as it requires configuring your DNS settings. Email authentication protocols, such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, prevent email fraud by making sure that emails come from legitimate sources.
SPF checks that emails come from authorized mail servers, DKIM ensures that email content hasn’t been tampered with, and DMARC sets policies for handling failed authentication and provides reporting. Using all three protocols together helps to secure your domain and improve email deliverability. This means your emails get past spam filters and into the inbox.
Reduce bounce rates to boost email ROI
Maximize the return on your email marketing investment by reducing bounce rates. Clean your email list, verify emails in real time, and implement the strategies we’ve shared to keep bounce rates low and improve deliverability.
Remember, the less bounce you have, the more engagement you’re likely to get from your target audience. Ultimately, better deliverability means more opportunities to drive conversions and achieve a higher email ROI.