Why Your Marketing Email Sending May Be Limited

Email deliverability is what determines whether your emails reach your supporters, donors, members, volunteers, and event guests.

When too many emails bounce, inbox providers may begin treating future emails as less trustworthy. This can lead to more messages landing in spam, being delayed, or being rejected entirely.

To protect your organization’s sending reputation, BetterUnite may temporarily limit large marketing email sends when recent campaigns show a high bounce rate.

What Is a Bounce?

A bounce happens when an email cannot be delivered to the recipient.

A hard bounce usually means the email address is invalid, closed, misspelled, or no longer exists.

A soft bounce usually means the address may be valid, but delivery failed temporarily because of a full inbox, temporary server issue, or similar condition.

A blocked bounce means the receiving mail server rejected the email. This can happen because of sender reputation, content, domain setup, or recipient-server rules.

Why Bounces Matter

A high bounce rate can signal that a contact list is outdated, poorly maintained, or includes addresses that did not clearly opt in.

High bounce rates can cause:

• More emails to land in spam
• Slower delivery
• Lower inbox placement
• Server-level blocks
• Reduced sender reputation
• Fewer supporters receiving future messages

Even a well-written email can perform poorly if the recipient list has too many invalid or stale addresses.

What Bounce Rate Is Healthy?

As a general guide:

• Under 1% is excellent
• 1-2% is healthy
• 2-5% should be watched
• 5-10% means cleanup is needed
• Over 10% is high risk
• Over 15% may limit large sends
• Over 20% requires extra caution

How BetterUnite Evaluates Sending Health

BetterUnite reviews recent marketing email activity using a trailing 30-day window.

The system looks at:

• Total targeted recipients
• Total delivered emails
• Total bounced emails
• Overall bounce rate

If your organization has sent to at least 500 recipients recently and your bounce rate is over 15%, large marketing sends may be limited.

Can I Still Send Emails?

Yes. BetterUnite allows smaller recovery sends so your organization can ease back in without waiting for the full 30-day window to pass.

If your recent bounce rate is over 15%, you can send to up to 1,000 recipients at a time.

If your recent bounce rate is over 20%, you can send to up to 250 recipients at a time.

This lets you continue sending to your best, most engaged contacts while you clean your list and rebuild stronger deliverability.

What Should I Send During Recovery?

During recovery, send only to your most reliable audience.

Good recovery segments include:

• Recent donors
• Recent event attendees
• Recently active members
• Contacts who opened or clicked recent emails
• Contacts added through current signup forms
• Contacts with recent transactions or engagement

Avoid sending to old, inactive, imported, or unverified contacts until they have been reviewed.

What To Do Next

Start by removing invalid and bounced emails, especially hard bounces. These addresses should not receive future marketing emails.

Review recent imports for typos, duplicate records, old work emails, missing @ symbols, and outdated addresses.

Do not send to your full database immediately after a high bounce issue. Start with smaller, engaged segments and watch the bounce rate.

Avoid purchased, rented, scraped, or third-party lists. These often produce high bounce rates and spam complaints.

For older contacts, consider a small re-engagement campaign asking whether they still want to hear from you.

Recommended Recovery Plan

1. Review bounced contacts.
2. Suppress or remove hard-bounced addresses.
3. Clean recent imports.
4. Send only to recently engaged contacts.
5. Keep recovery sends small.
6. Monitor bounce rate after each campaign.
7. Gradually expand your audience as deliverability improves.

The goal is to bring your bounce rate below 5%, and ideally below 2%.

Key Takeaway

A sending limit is not a punishment. It is a deliverability safeguard.

High bounce rates can damage your ability to reach people who care about your mission. By cleaning invalid addresses and restarting with smaller, engaged audiences, your organization can improve email performance and protect future inbox placement.