What is Bounce rate?
The share of sent emails that could not be delivered, split into permanent hard bounces and temporary soft bounces.
Bounce rate is the share of sent emails that never reached an inbox. Hard bounces are permanent failures: the address does not exist or the domain is dead. Soft bounces are temporary: a full mailbox, a server timeout, a message flagged as too large.
Bounce rate matters beyond the lost delivery. Mailbox providers read a high bounce rate as a signal of a stale or purchased list, which damages sender reputation and drags down deliverability for everyone still on the list. Sending platforms suppress hard-bounced addresses automatically, and regular list cleaning keeps the rate low.
Go deeper
More terms
Track these metrics in your own account
Distinctful connects your content, email newsletter, and offers into one purpose-built system so you effortlessly build an audience at scale.