A high email bounce rate isn’t just frustrating, it means that fewer people receive your emails, and that can hurt your webinar’s success. With WebinarGeek, you can track and reduce bounces. It is important to understand why they happen and how to fix them.
A healthy bounce rate is typically below 2.5%. It's time to take action if it starts going above that! However, keep the context in mind, small numbers can skew the stats, so focus on trends over time.
Where to find your bounce rate in WebinarGeek
You can check your bounce percentage at account level or at email level. If you want to learn more about the email statistics, take a look at this article on Email statistics.
On account level
Go to the 'Statistics' at the top of your overview page. Here, you can find the average of your email bounce percentage.
On email level
To find the bounce percentage of a single email, first go to your webinar page, 'Statistics' > click on an email. Here, you see the bounce percentages for that email.
By clicking on an email, you can also see which emails are bounced, delivered, Processing, or opened. If an email is processing, it likely has to do with the email itself. Take a look at this article to find out what could cause it.
What are reasons that emails bounce?
An email bounces when it doesn’t reach the recipient’s inbox. Below are the most common causes, ranked from most to least frequent:
The email address doesn’t exist
If an email address doesn’t exist, the email cannot be delivered to the inbox, due to typos like
@gmial.comor@hotmial.comor when a receipient has filled in a fake email.Full inbox
Temporary problems with the recipient’s mail server or full inboxes can also cause bounces.
The recipient has marked WebinarGeek emails as spam in the past
If the recipient has marked emails from WebinarGeek as spam in the past, they will be placed on our ‘Suppression list’, which means that we can no longer send them emails.
The recipient’s email provider has blocked your custom sender domain
Sometimes, an email provider might block certain senders from sending emails to users of their email service. This can only be the reason if you’re using your own domain to send emails.
Methods to reduce your bounce rate
There are several ways to reduce your bounce rate. Some focus on preventing bounces from happening in the first place, while others help you clean up addresses that are likely to bounce. Below are a few methods to walk through.
1. Clean up your list by correcting typos
Correct typos like .con, .gmial, or .hotmal.
Go to your webinar 'Statistics' > 'Registration'
Search for misspelled emails, copy and paste the email and first name to an Excel sheet.
Correct the typos.
Import the CSV file with the correct emails via 'Add contacts' > 'CSV import'. Don’t forget to check 'Send confirmation email'.
2. Use 'email verification' to ensure a high-quality list
You can enable the email verification option for your webinar. This way, subscribers must confirm their email address before they receive your webinar link, ensuring their email is valid and active. It's a little extra effort for your subscriber since it's only one click in their email!
Go to your webinar editor
Click 'Registrations' > 'Settings'
Activate 'Require email verification'
3. When importing contacts, evaluate the quality
You might be using a list of leads or customers from your own CRM system. Before uploading it, make sure to check which email addresses have bounced in the past, and for how long. Based on that, decide which addresses should be removed from your list before importing them into your next webinar to ensure a healthy list!
4. Avoid being marked as spam
When your emails are relevant and desirable, recipients are less likely to mark them as spam. But if they see your emails as unwanted, they may report them as spam. This could damage your reputation, and it makes the recipient unreachable for future emails. So consider for all emails:
Make your content relevant: For every email, consider, why would someone want to read this?
Consciously choose your Follow-Ups: Too many follow-up or reminder emails will drive people to hit the spam button.
Style your emails: Make them personal, recognizable, and visually appealing. This reduces the chances that recipients would want to get rid of them!
Always include the unsubscribe option: This gives people a clean way out and protects your deliverability.
5. After being marked as spam
If a recipient has previously marked one of WebinarGeek’s emails as spam, our system will automatically place them on our bounce list. If they later request to start receiving emails again, our customer support team can remove them from this list. However, if they mark the emails as spam again, they will be placed back on the bounce list. A good way to check if this is the cause of a bounce is to see whether the recipient was successfully receiving emails in the past, but new emails suddenly started bouncing.
If the recipient is not on our bounce list, it’s likely they’re on the bounce list of their own email provider or have a spam filter active. In that case, their provider or spam filter is blocking your messages from being delivered, and you’ll need to contact the recipient to resolve the issue.
Lowering your bounce rate takes some effort, but it leads to better deliverability, higher engagement, and ultimately, more successful webinars.
Followed the tips, but still seeing a high bounce rate? Contact customer support to help find the best approach for you!
Reduce email bounce | statistics | spam filter | registrations | email verification