What is called a "bounce" in the field of mailing and marketing in general is simply a recipient who cannot receive the message that the sender wishes to send.
In a more literal way, "bounce" means "bounce back". It is the automated message in email systems that informs the sender that the previous message was not delivered. So we say that the message has "bounced".
In concrete terms, bounces are a plague for marketers, not only do they lower the rate of mail sent, but above all, they demolish the authority of your email addresses with email systems.
It is obvious that for an algorithm of these mail systems, a person who tries to reach several mails that are not attributed is simply a person who tries to scam as many people as possible without prior verification. Collecting as many emails as possible was a scamming technique to reach as many people as possible, and it turns out that they often send emails to addresses that are lost in the shuffle.
Because of this, the algorithms have taken their precaution and now they discard as much as they can all the email addresses that try to spam non-existent accounts.
👉 To drastically reduce bounces, it's essential to set up the right technical configurations beforehand. This includes properly configuring your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records on your domain. These three protocols prove that you’re the legitimate sender of your campaigns and help boost your deliverability.
But that’s not all : at Emelia, we also strongly recommend that you verify your email lists before every campaign using our built-in Email Verifier.
If you are not already familiar with emelia's Email Verifier, here is a short video:
By cleaning your lists, you avoid sending messages to inactive or invalid addresses, which protects your sender reputation and improves overall campaign performance.
To avoid this, at Emelia we have set up an "anti-bounce" solution. Every time someone adds a list in Emelia and our system receives a return message telling us that the email is no longer attributed, we blacklist it and prevent our future clients from sending an email to these addresses in their campaigns.
As most of the time all marketers find their email list in the same place, we avoid bounces for many of our customers and thus protect them from shadow-banning by the hosting companies.
👉 And if you're looking to start with clean, up-to-date, and highly targeted lists, consider using Emelia’s built-in LinkedIn scraper. It allows you to automatically extract professional contact details from qualified LinkedIn profiles and enrich them for your campaigns. It's a great way to avoid outdated addresses and improve the quality of your outreach from the start.
Watch this short video if you want to scrape your future leads!
It's a virtuous circle, the more customers we have, the more bounced email lists we have, the more we protect our users.
Smart, isn't it? So don't worry about your next campaigns, we'll help you as much as possible!
Have a great mailing campaign at Emelia ;)
avoiding bounces in cold mailing FAQ
Why do emails bounce in cold mailing?+
Four main reasons: 1) non-existent address (typo, employee left), 2) inbox full, 3) inactive domain (closed company), 4) anti-spam server-side block. A bounce rate >5% destroys your sender reputation and sends you to spam for future sends.
What bounce rate is acceptable in cold email?+
2026 benchmark: under 2% = excellent, 2-5% = OK, 5-10% = to fix, >10% = disaster (your mailbox risks Gmail/Microsoft suspension). To stay under 5%, ALWAYS verify your email list with a tool like Neverbounce, Kickbox, or Emelia's integrated verification before sending.
How to avoid bounces before sending?+
Three actions: 1) SMTP verification of each email (Emelia does this natively, or use Neverbounce/Kickbox), 2) source fresh data (live LinkedIn > static base), 3) avoid role-based emails (info@, contact@, support@ which often bounce). Verifying 1,000 emails costs $8-20, deliverability benefit is 10-100x.
What to do if you already have a high bounce rate?+
Four recovery steps: 1) stop the campaign immediately, 2) clean your list with Neverbounce/Kickbox (remove all invalids), 3) slow warm-up over 2-3 weeks (just 10-20 emails/day), 4) resume with a 100% verified list. Recovery time: 2-4 weeks to regain good reputation.
How to handle soft vs hard bounces?+
Hard bounce = non-existent address (remove permanently). Soft bounce = temporary issue (full inbox, server down). Serious tools (Emelia, Lemlist) handle automatically: 1 hard bounce = removed, 3 consecutive soft bounces = removed. You don't have to do anything manually, the tool protects your reputation.
