How one SaaS cut their bounce rate from 8% to 0.3%

A B2B SaaS with 50,000 users had an 8% hard bounce rate and a suspended SendGrid account. We walk through the three-step fix they implemented in a single week.

When Clearpath Analytics (name changed) reached out to us, they were in crisis. Their SendGrid account had been suspended after a large campaign triggered an 8.2% hard bounce rate. They had a 50,000-contact list built over three years from conference leads, trial sign-ups, and a legacy import from a previous product.

Step 1: Audit the full list

The first thing we did was run their entire 50,000-address list through a bulk validation job. Results came back within two minutes. Of their 50,000 addresses, 9,400 were INVALID, 2,100 were DISPOSABLE, and 3,800 were CATCH_ALL. That's 15,300 addresses — 30.6% of their list — that should never have been in a campaign. The INVALID addresses alone explained the bounce rate.

Step 2: Segment what remained

The 34,700 remaining addresses were split into three groups: VALID (28,900), CATCH_ALL (3,800), and UNKNOWN (2,000). We advised sending only to the VALID segment first. The CATCH_ALL group would be tested in a small, isolated send to observe actual delivery behavior before including them in larger campaigns.

Going from 50,000 contacts to 28,900 felt like a loss. Three campaigns later, their open rate had gone from 14% to 31%. Fewer contacts, dramatically better results.

Step 3: Fix the source

The bulk cleanup was the emergency fix. The permanent fix was adding real-time validation to their sign-up form and adding OhBounce.ai to their trial activation flow. New users couldn't create an account with an INVALID or DISPOSABLE email. Within a month, their new-user bounce rate had dropped to effectively zero.

The result

After SendGrid reviewed their remediation steps and restored their account, Clearpath Analytics ran their next campaign to the clean 28,900 segment. Hard bounce rate: 0.28%. Open rate: 31.4%, up from 14.1% the previous quarter. They've maintained a bounce rate under 0.4% ever since.