| Mailchimp | |
|---|---|
| Their stated threshold | Mailchimp's terms let it suspend accounts with high bounce or complaint rates. It publishes no single cut-off percentage, and its abuse-prevention system, Omnivore, reviews lists at import and at send time. |
| What happens if you cross it | Sending stops while Mailchimp's compliance team reviews the account. Getting it back means explaining where the list came from and how people signed up. An 8% campaign from one old import is the classic trigger. |
| Where the bounce data lives | Reports, then the campaign, then Bounced in the activity breakdown, with hard and soft on separate tabs. Audience, then All contacts, filtered to the Cleaned status, shows every address Mailchimp removed for you. |
| How bounces are classified | A hard bounce is cleaned from the audience at once, in most cases. Mailchimp's help center says a soft bounce becomes a hard bounce after 7 soft bounces for a contact with no activity, or up to 15 for one who has opened or clicked before. |
Bringing the rate down
Each step is an action inside Mailchimp, in the order worth taking them.
Pause the automations that mail the whole audience
A welcome series or a birthday journey keeps sending while you investigate. Pause anything that targets the full audience, so the rate stops climbing while you work out where the bad addresses came from.
Open the Cleaned contacts and sort by date
Audience, All contacts, filter to Cleaned. Sort by the date they were cleaned and check the Source column. A cluster from one import or one signup form names your problem in a minute.
Archive the rest of that import
If one old spreadsheet produced most of the bounces, the addresses from it that haven't bounced yet are the next ones to fail. Archive them. Archived contacts leave your bill and keep their history, so you can bring back the good ones later.
Check the batch before it comes back
Export the archived contacts, run them through ZapBounce, and unarchive only the addresses that come back valid. Ten thousand checks cost $25, and results that come back unknown cost nothing.
Turn on double opt-in for your signup forms
Audience, Signup forms, then the form's settings. A person has to click a link in their inbox before they join, which stops typos and fake addresses at the source.
Send to your engaged segment first
Build a segment of contacts who opened or clicked in the last 90 days and send the next campaign to them alone. A low bounce rate on that send shows Mailchimp the account is under control again.
The mistake people make here
A bounce report mixes two causes that need opposite fixes. Some addresses don't exist. Other times a receiver refused mail it could have delivered. You fix the first by checking the list. The second is a sending problem, and you fix it on the sending side.
Questions people ask
My Mailchimp bounce rate is 8%. What should I do first?
Stop sending to the part of the list that caused it. Pause automations, find the import behind the Cleaned contacts, and archive the rest of that batch until it has been checked. Then send to engaged contacts only.
Will Mailchimp suspend my account for bounces?
It can. Mailchimp's terms allow suspension for high bounce and complaint rates, and its compliance team reviews accounts whose campaigns cross that line, starting with where the list came from.
What does Cleaned mean in Mailchimp?
Cleaned is the status Mailchimp gives an address that hard bounced, or that soft bounced 7 times with no activity. Mailchimp stops sending to it, stops billing for it, and blocks it from being re-imported.
Does a bounced contact still cost me money in Mailchimp?
Not once it is cleaned. Cleaned and archived contacts leave your plan count. A contact that soft bounced but is still subscribed does count, which is why archiving a dead segment lowers the bill.
How many soft bounces before Mailchimp cleans an address?
Seven for a contact with no subscriber activity, and up to 15 for a contact who has opened or clicked before, according to Mailchimp's help center. After that the soft bounce is treated as a hard bounce.