Maintaining a Healthy Bounce Rate
A healthy bounce rate protects your sender reputation, keeps your deliverability high, and ensures your email accounts stay in good standing. Prospi includes automatic protections to help you maintain a healthy bounce rate at all times. Here is everything you need to know.
How Prospi's Auto-Pause Protects You
Prospi continuously monitors the bounce rate for each campaign. When the bounce rate exceeds the configured threshold (default: 5%), the campaign is automatically paused to protect your sender reputation. This built-in safety net ensures your accounts stay healthy.
Why this matters
Email providers like Google and Microsoft track bounce rates at the sending domain and IP level. Keeping your bounce rate low ensures your domain maintains a strong reputation, which benefits deliverability across all your campaigns.
What to do when a campaign is auto-paused
Go to the paused campaign and review the Bounce Report in the Activity tab.
Identify which leads bounced (see best practices below).
Remove all bounced leads from the campaign.
Re-verify remaining leads before resuming.
Resume the campaign once you are confident the remaining leads are clean.
[IMAGE: Screenshot of a campaign that has been auto-paused with the bounce rate warning banner]
Bounce Rate Benchmarks
Bounce Rate | Status | Action |
Under 2% | Healthy | No action needed. Keep monitoring. |
2% – 5% | Caution | Review list quality and re-verify before sending more. |
Over 5% | Auto-Pause | Campaign paused. Clean your list before resuming. |
Best Practices for Keeping Bounce Rates Low
1. Use Verified Lead Data
Always run lists through Prospi's enrichment and verification pipeline before adding them to a campaign. Remove any leads marked "invalid" or "disposable." For lists older than 3 months, re-verify all email addresses before sending.
2. Always Verify Imported Leads
Even if you already have email addresses, run them through Prospi's verification step. In the campaign setup flow, make sure the verification step is enabled. Review the results and exclude any leads that come back as "invalid," "unknown," or "risky."
3. Handle Catchall Domains Wisely
Catchall domains accept all incoming email at the server level, so individual addresses cannot be verified with full certainty. To stay safe:
Segment catchall leads into a separate campaign or sending group.
Send to catchall leads at lower volume so you can monitor bounce rates closely.
If catchall leads bounce above 3%, pause sending to that segment and consider additional verification.
4. Complete Warmup Before Sending
Let Prospi's warmup process run its full course (2–4 weeks) before sending campaign emails from a new account. Distribute volume across multiple warmed-up accounts rather than pushing all volume through one account.
How to Recover After a High Bounce Rate
Pause the campaign (if not already auto-paused).
Export and review the bounce list - look for patterns (same domain, same source list, same enrichment batch).
Remove all bounced leads and any other unverified leads from the campaign.
Re-verify remaining leads before resuming.
Reduce daily sending volume temporarily - send at 50% of normal volume for 3–5 days to let your reputation strengthen.
Monitor closely - watch the bounce rate on the Activity tab after resuming. If it climbs above 2%, pause again and review further.
If your bounce rate remains elevated after following all the steps above, contact Prospi support. We can review your account's sending reputation and help you get back on track.