The "Bounce Rate" is the percentage of emails that fail to deliver to your prospects and "bounced" back, or returned to your inbox. Proactively managing your bounce rates safeguards your sender reputation and enhances your ability to connect with prospects successfully.

Research suggests a Bounce Rate of 5% or less indicates healthy first-touch engagement. However, if Bounce Rates climb higher, this is a signal that your contact email data needs improvement. What steps can you take to lower the bounce rate metric and prevent it from rising?

Salesloft’s Prospecting Results Analytics provide Cadence-level reporting, including email step bounce rates. You can use this page to assess the effectiveness of your cadence email steps and refine your strategy.  

Here's how you can investigate and resolve high bounce rates using Salesloft:

1. Use the Prospecting Results Analytics to Assess Bounce Rate

Salesloft’s Prospecting Results Analytics provides in-depth reporting on the performance and outcomes of your prospecting activities, such as emailing, calling…etc.

You can use this page to assess email performance metrics. The report table at the bottom of the page shows columns of data including bounce rates, across different cadence steps.

Here’s a look at the Prospecting Results Analytics page:

2. Set Automation Rule to Monitor for Outliers

Let’s say you notice that your overall Bounced rate is 10%, but not all cadences are affected. 

Knowing that 2% is your benchmark, you pinpoint each cadence with a higher bounce rate and compound them into a list– the outliers.

Identifying outliers helps you determine where processes or performance may be deviating from expectations. These outliers offer you a targeted starting point for inspection. Here’s where you can focus your investigation efforts:

• Review bounced emails in each cadence to pinpoint why these emails failed to send (e.g., invalid domain, non-existent email address).
• Consider similarities between the outliers. Are they a similar industry, Account…etc.? If yes, consider refreshing your data source for this industry or Account to reduce future bounces.
• Cross-check the email addresses in each Cadence with a trusted data source.

3. Enable Cadence Automation Setting

Salesloft’s Cadence Automation settings allow you to assign specific actions to take place when an initial action occurs within a cadence. Specifically, this settings page allows you to do the following:

• Change the stage to Bounced when an email sent to a Person on the cadence bounces
• Determine whether a Person should be removed from the cadence if an email sent to them bounces

By establishing the Cadence Automation settings, you can proactively manage bounces and gather data to improve your engagement strategy. 

Here’s a look at the Cadence Automation settings:

To learn more about the Cadence Automation settings, check out this article.

4. Check Data Quality

Your team has been using the same prospect list for the last two quarters, and you’re suddenly seeing a rise in bounce rates to 12%. After reviewing, you realize the list was pulled from an outdated database.

Old data is a common culprit for high bounce rates. In this case:

• Reach out to your data provider or internal team to get a fresh, up-to-date list.
• Implement regular data audits to ensure that your prospect lists are current.
• If the data source consistently provides stale information, it may be time to explore new, more reliable data vendors.

5. Take Verification Steps

You notice that your bounce rate jumps when a new batch of leads is added to your Cadences. These leads came directly from a list provided by a new sales partner, and many email addresses are bouncing.

This indicates a potential issue with how email addresses are being added. To prevent this in the future:

• Introduce an email verification tool that checks for valid addresses before contacts are added to Cadences.
• Consider verifying the source of the new leads and adding a vetting process to ensure that only high-quality, verified leads make it to your system.
• Regularly scrub your existing contact lists for inactive or invalid addresses.

6. Try Alternative Channels

Despite following the above steps, you still see high bounce rates when targeting C-suite executives. Many of their email addresses are outdated or protected by strict filters, making it hard to reach them via email alone.

In this scenario, pivot to multi-channel engagement:

• Use LinkedIn to directly message or connect with these contacts, especially in industries where executives are active on the platform.
• Send physical mail or use phone engagement to get in touch, verify their email, and correct any errors in your database.
• If you can establish contact through these alternative channels, ask for the best way to reach them via email and update your records accordingly.

Bounce rates are an important health check for your email campaigns. Stay vigilant in monitoring this metric, aim for a bounce rate under 2%, and always be proactive in ensuring the accuracy of your data. If you can keep bounce rates low, you’ll reach more prospects and ultimately generate more pipeline.

How does your team handle bounce rates? Share in the comments!

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