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Handling High Bounce Rate Issues in Email Campaigns

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I recently launched a campaign on Instantly, but it got paused due to a high bounce rate — which was surprising. We used Icypeas and FullEnrich to source the emails, both of which have built-in verification and usually result in very low bounce rates. After digging in, I manually checked several of the bounced emails using multiple verifiers (Instantly, BounceBan, MillionVerifier), and they all showed as valid. To double-check, I even sent a manual email from my main domain to one of the bounced addresses — and it went through without bouncing. What’s also strange is that many of the bounced addresses share the same domain, which I’ve never seen before. That makes me wonder: could it be that the emails are technically valid, but those domains have stricter security protocols and are rejecting our messages based on sender reputation — possibly flagging us as spam and hard-bouncing instead of sending to junk? I also checked, and the bounces weren’t isolated to one sending domain — they were spread across multiple mailboxes. So it doesn’t seem like a single domain issue. All our domains and mailboxes have been warmed for months on Instantly now. If that’s what’s going on, what would you recommend we do to fix or prevent this going forward? Appreciate any help here!

  • Avatar of Bharat D.
    Bharat D.
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    A client of mine had an exact issue. We figured that it's the copy and volume which was the culprit. Are you using spintax? How many emails are you sending per day? Who is the ESP of those domains(

  • Avatar of Julia X.
    Julia X.
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    Got it! I haven’t used spintax yet, but I’ll definitely give it a try. We’ve got 120+ mailboxes fully warmed up and just launched a new campaign with 12K leads — it’s our first time running a list this large (we previously capped campaigns at 5K and was only running sporadically, not everyday). I set the sending cap at 30 emails per domain per day, which should’ve let us send over 4K/day across all accounts. However, after just 2K sends, we started seeing a bounce rate over 5%, so the campaign paused automatically. It’s only been running for about half a day so far. We’re using Instantly as the ESP.

  • Avatar of Bharat D.
    Bharat D.
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    Ahh! That's the same thing the other client did. They increased from 15 inboxes to 150. This is what I changed:

    1. 1.

      Split a single campaign into multiple campaigns with change in the copy.

    2. 2.

      Use limited mail boxes 20-30 per campaign.

    3. 3.

      Use spintax for all messages.

    Its all going good now.

  • Avatar of Julia X.
    Julia X.
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    I see!! This is so helpful - thank you so so much!

  • Avatar of Kathleen R.
    Kathleen R.
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    To clarify Bharat D., you mean only using each mail box for 20-30 emails sends pe rday?

  • Avatar of Bharat D.
    Bharat D.
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    Kathleen R. - each mail box should not exceed 10 emails/day. Some do 15 per each mailbox. In the discussion above, I meant 20-30 mailboxes per campaign. Not emails/mailbox.

  • Avatar of Julia X.
    Julia X.
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    I see, does 30 per mailbox trigger higher spam rate?

  • Avatar of Bharat D.
    Bharat D.
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    Julia X. - Most likely, yes.

  • Avatar of Julia X.
    Julia X.
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    Good to know!!