Bounce Rate
The percentage of sent emails that fail to reach the recipient's inbox, split into hard and soft bounces.
Definition
In email, bounce rate is the share of messages that the receiving server rejects. A hard bounce is a permanent failure — invalid address, domain doesn't exist — and the contact should be removed from sending. A soft bounce is temporary — full mailbox, server down — and the message can be retried. Persistently high bounce rates signal poor list hygiene to mailbox providers and hurt deliverability. (In web analytics, "bounce rate" instead means single-page visits, which is a different metric.)
Example
A list of 10,000 emails returns 250 hard bounces (2.5%) and 80 soft bounces (0.8%). The hard bounces are auto-suppressed before the next send.
How it relates to WellPlan
WellPlan auto-suppresses hard bounces, retries soft bounces, and surfaces bounce health per domain and per campaign so deliverability stays high. See the features overview.
Related pages
Related terms
See Bounce Rate in WellPlan
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