You send 10,000. A few hundred come back.You send ten thousand emails. A few hundred come straight back, rejected. That return rate has a name, bounce rate, and it's one of the clearest signals of how healthy your list really is.
⬡ talking-stat, big "10,000 sent", then "200 returned" flips in below, then a pill: "= 2% bounce rate"Bounce rate is the percentage of your emails that couldn't be delivered and got returned by the receiving server. Simple math: bounces divided by emails sent, times a hundred. Two hundred bounces out of ten thousand sends is a two percent bounce rate.
⬡ gauge-meter, a needle labelled "bounce rate" resting at 2%, the formula "bounces / sent x 100" underneathEvery bounce carries a reason. The receiving server sends back a little status code explaining what went wrong. A 550 means the address doesn't exist. A 421 means the server was busy right then. Your email provider reads those codes and sorts each one into a "hard bounce," which is permanent, or a "soft bounce," which is temporary.
⬡ dissect, one bounced envelope stamped "550", labels pointing at it: "code" · "hard = permanent" · "soft = temporary"If this is clearing things up, hit subscribe, we're answering every email metric one video at a time.
⬡ title-card, "Subscribe" lower thirdHere's why this number gets watched so closely. Mailbox providers use it to judge whether you're a responsible sender. A high bounce rate says you're mailing to bad data, an old list, a purchased one, addresses that were never real. That's a reputation problem, not just a delivery blip.
⬡ split-compare, LEFT "Clean list: low bounce, trusted sender" vs RIGHT "Dirty list: high bounce, red flag"So what's safe? Aim low. For most senders, keeping total bounces under a couple percent, and hard bounces well under that, is the healthy zone. It varies by who you're mailing and how you collected them, so treat it as a direction, not a magic line. Climb too high for too long and some providers will even pause your account.
⬡ gauge-meter, needle drifting up from green into amber, caption "aim low, it varies"So bounce rate is just returns divided by sends, but mailbox providers read it as a list-health score. Keep it low by not mailing addresses that were never going to work.
⬡ title-cardIf you'd rather not guess which addresses are about to bounce, validating your list before you send catches the dead ones first. That's the whole idea behind RME Clean.
Next up: the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce, because they need completely different responses. And subscribe for the rest of the metrics playbook.
⬡ end-card, Subscribe + Next: "Hard vs soft bounces" (004.004.002)What is bounce rate? It's the percentage of emails that couldn't be delivered and got returned by the receiving server: bounces divided by sends, times a hundred. This video breaks down the SMTP codes inside a bounce (550 for a nonexistent address, 421 for a busy server), how your provider sorts them into hard and soft bounces, and why mailbox providers treat a high bounce rate as a list-health red flag. Plus rough guardrails, aim low, but it varies by sender.
Next: Hard vs soft bounces → [link 004.004.002]
Full written guide → reviewmyemails.com/emailalmanac
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