# What is a good cold email bounce rate?
> Keep hard bounces under about 2 percent. Higher usually means bad data. Providers treat bounce spikes as a reason to distrust the domain.
- HTML: https://omentir.com/help/what-is-a-good-cold-email-bounce-rate
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A hard bounce means the address does not exist or will not take mail. Soft bounces are temporary. Count hard bounces against list quality. Vendor benches often show average campaigns well above 2 percent. That average is not a target. It is a warning that a lot of lists are dirty.

Verify before send. Remove role accounts if they bounce. Stop the campaign if bounce jumps. Sending through a spike "to finish the list" is how the domain dies for a month.

Catch-all domains can look delivered and still be junk. Verification plus small tests beat a waterfall that marks everything valid.

Bounces are not replies. Do not celebrate a 0 percent bounce on a list that also has 0 percent replies if you only sent to 12 friends.

If a new source of leads always arrives with high bounce, fire the source. See [email verification](/help/what-is-email-verification).

## Related

- [What is email verification and why does it matter?](https://omentir.com/help/what-is-email-verification.md)
- [Why are my cold emails going to spam?](https://omentir.com/help/why-are-my-cold-emails-going-to-spam.md)
- [How do I find work emails from LinkedIn?](https://omentir.com/help/how-to-find-work-emails-from-linkedin.md)

## Frequently asked questions

**Is 5 percent bounce OK because Woodpecker's average is 5?**

Averages include messy accounts. Stay under 2 percent if you want a domain next quarter.

**Do out-of-office messages count as bounces?**

They should not. They are replies. Configure the tool so it does not punish you for OOO.

**Should I retry hard bounces?**

No. Retrying a dead address is how you look like a bot to the provider.

**Does LinkedIn have bounce rates?**

Not the same way. Ignores and IDK are the cousin metrics. Different system.

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