Cheat sheet
Email Bounce Rate Benchmarks
A quick reference for judging a bounce rate at a glance and knowing when to stop and re-verify.
The thresholds
- Under 2% — healthy; most house lists should sit here.
- 2–5% — warning; re-verify before your next send.
- 5%+ — danger; pause sending and clean the list now.
- Spam complaints should stay under 0.3% under the new sender rules.
By list type
- Verified house list: under 2%.
- Older CRM export: ~5%.
- Cold / purchased list: 7–10%.
- Scraped list: 12%+ — verify before any send.
What pushes it up
- List age (data decays ~2%/month).
- Purchased or scraped sources.
- No verification before sending.
- Sending to catch-all-heavy B2B domains cold.
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