How to Avoid Email Bounces (Without Guesswork)

Bounces are the #1 red flag to email providers.
Go above ~2%, and you’re in their “problem sender” book.

It’s not just about wasted sends — high bounce rates wreck your sender reputation, tank deliverability, and make it harder for your emails to land in the inbox.

The good news?
Avoiding bounces isn’t rocket science. You just need the right habits and the right tools.

Know Why Emails Bounce

Every bounce has a reason, and most of them are preventable.

Common causes:

• Invalid addresses — typos like gnail.com instead of gmail.com.
• Expired domains — the company shut down or stopped using that domain.
• Temporary issues — full inbox, server downtime.

Some of these are “soft” bounces (temporary) and some are “hard” (permanent). Hard bounces are the ones that kill deliverability fastest.

Clean Your List Before You Send

Sending to a dirty list is asking for trouble. Every bad address is a potential bounce — and enough of them will get you flagged by your ESP.

The fix?
Run your list through a verification tool before sending.

With TLDR Verify, you get:

• Yes or No results — never “unknown.”
• Bulk list cleaning in minutes.
• 99.2% delivery rate based on millions of real sends.

The result: a clean, safe list ready for outreach.

Avoid the Catch-All Trap

Catch-all domains are sneaky. They accept every email you send, but that doesn’t mean the inbox exists.

Most tools will shrug and mark them as “catch-all” or “unknown,” leaving you to guess.
We take the guesswork out — if it’s real, we say yes. If it’s not, we say no.

Stripping catch-alls out of your list before you hit send is one of the fastest ways to keep bounce rates under control.

Monitor Your Campaign Results

Even with a clean list, keep your eye on bounce rates after each send.

• If they creep toward 2%, stop and re-verify your data.
• Segment out high-risk contacts before they cause damage.
• Use deliverability tools to track inbox placement over time.

The sooner you catch a problem, the easier it is to fix.

Bottom line:

Bounces are a choice, not a mystery. Clean your list, remove catch-alls, and keep your sender reputation intact. It’s either that or fall behind.