What is Email deliverability [+ tips to improve in 2024]
Email channel gives an exceptional ROI of $36 on every dollar spent! Sounds amazing, right? But what if 1 in every 10 of those emails never reach their intended recipients? That’s the reality of poor email deliverability. And Sarah*, an SDR at a promising startup, knows this pain too well.
Missed opportunities, dissatisfied customers, stalled growth, and the frustration of emails landing in the spam folder instead of inboxes…
We’ll cover
- What is email deliverability
- What is an email delivery
- What is the difference between email delivery and deliverability
- Why is email deliverability important
- What is a good email deliverability rate
- Factors affecting email deliverability and tips to improve.
- Technical
- Recipient
- Best Practices by ESPs
- 5 ways to reach more inboxes
Imagine spending hours crafting the perfect email campaign, only to have it disappear into the spam. That’s what happens when your email deliverability suffers.
This leads to lost revenue and damages your sender’s reputation. Thus, making it harder to get future emails delivered.
To be honest, Sarah is frustrated. Let’s help her and you with some nuggets of email deliverability wisdom.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
What is meant by email deliverability?
Email deliverability refers to a sender’s ability to deliver their emails to the inbox—not the spam folder.
This is NOT about sending your email and whether it bounced back or not. It’s more than that. It’s about checking where the email lands—inbox, spam, or promotions tab.
Surprisingly, many salespeople and marketers don’t understand the critical importance of deliverability (check out the figure below).
Sarah, too, was guilty of not understanding that.
What is email delivery?
Email delivery specifically refers to sending an email from the sender’s server to the recipient’s mail server. It is about whether the server at the recipient’s end accepted the email or not.
It involves various technical aspects such as DNS (Domain Name System) records, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) configuration, and IP reputation management.
What is the difference between email delivery and deliverability?
Email delivery focuses on the technical aspects of transmitting an email from the sender to the recipient’s mail server. Whereas, email deliverability focuses on the email successfully landing in the recipient’s inbox.
| Parameters | Email Delivery | Email Deliverability |
| Focus | The technical process of sending an email from the sender to the recipient server | Ensuring the email lands in the inbox, not spam |
| Key metrics | Delivery rates, bounces | Inbox placement rates, Spam placement rates, Missing rate |
If you’re a beginner, understanding ‘email deliverability vs email delivery’ is a good place to start. Get this clear and then go deeper into the granularities of email deliverability.
Check out the Top 8 Email Deliverability Resources From 2023 that will help you understand the concepts better.
Why is email deliverability important?
Reach Your Audience: With good deliverability, you maximize the number of people who see your emails.
Imagine sending 100 emails with 50% deliverability; only 50 people see your message. Now imagine 90% deliverability – 90 people see your message! That’s a potential 80% increase in reach!
Boost Engagement: Emails in inboxes are more likely to be opened, clicked, and acted upon. Higher engagement translates to better campaign performance and increased ROI. Studies show emails in inboxes generate 6 times more clicks than those in spam folders!
Protect Your Reputation: Poor deliverability can harm your sender’s reputation, making it harder for future emails to reach inboxes. This can have a domino effect, impacting your brand image and future marketing efforts.
Stay Compliant: Deliverability best practices often overlap with anti-spam regulations. Good deliverability helps you avoid legal issues and maintain ethical email marketing practices.
What is a good email deliverability rate?
A good email deliverability rate is one that consistently ensures that your emails reach the intended recipients’ inboxes and not the spam folder.
Many ESPs (email service providers) report email deliverability – the “sent minus bounced” metric. By that measure, the deliverability should be around 98.5%. Yet, this is not the case.
For Sarah, again, this was so confusing (until now). She was always baffled by the metrics and couldn’t understand the nitty gritty of the rate.
Know the rates like inbox placement rate, missing rate, and bounce rate if you want to know what’s a deliverability rate.
Inbox placement rate
An accurate way to measure email deliverability. Inbox placement rates measure how many emails are delivered to the inbox versus the spam folder.
| Inbox placement rate = Number of emails delivered into inbox / Total number of emails sent |
Missing rate
It measures the number of emails that didn’t arrive at all. This usually happens because the ESPs blocked your emails.
| Missing rate = % of emails that did not go into either inbox or spam folder |
Bounce rate
The average bounce rate, globally, (for both hard and soft bounces) for permission-based email marketing programs is approximately 1.5 percent.
| Bounce rate = % of emails that weren’t accepted and returned to the sender |
Email bounces are common when you’re trying to send emails. Yet, knowing the reasons behind these bounces is critical.
Read about: Soft Bounce vs Hard Bounce (+5 Tips to fix them)
There is no specific percentage that defines a perfect deliverability rate. Yet, maintaining a high delivery rate (above 95%) and low bounce rate (below 2%) is generally considered good.
Google’s latest guidelines have added another layer of complexity, making good deliverability more crucial than ever.
Want to decode Google’s latest sender guidelines? Read through the blog to understand more.
Factors Affecting Email Deliverability and how to improve
The following are the most critical factors that affect your email deliverability. Monitor and optimize the following factors to successfully send your emails to inboxes.
Along with these factors, we’ve given some tips to improve your email deliverability in 2024.
Technical factors
Authentication Protocols: If these authentication protocols – SPF, DKIM, and DMARC aren’t in place, email deliverability might be compromised. Ensure these are in place and monitored continuously.
Check out this cold email checklist to understand these protocols in detail.
List quality: A clean, engaged list is key. Regularly remove inactive subscribers and invalid addresses. Sending to a clean list reduces bounce rates and spam complaints, boosting your sender’s reputation.
Pro tip💡: Use tools like Zerobounce to remove invalid email addresses.
Email factors
Email warming: Without a sending history, ESPs may be suspicious of emails coming from a brand-new sending domain or IP. You need to take things slow at the start and ramp up to high-volume sending.
Email volume: Email volumes have exponentially increased over a couple of years. The more generic emails, the higher the chances of emails getting into spam.
Email content and formatting: Emails should be clear, concise, and compelling. Use formatting techniques such as bullet points and headings to make the content easy to read and understand.
Subject lines: Avoid spam-flagging subject lines. Words like ‘Free’, ‘Act now’, ‘offers’, ‘discounts’, etc. can trigger the ESPs to block your emails and blacklist you.
Recipient factors
Avoid URL shorteners: Use full, recognizable URLs to avoid triggering spam filters. This improves the sender’s reputation and improves trust.
Make it easy to unsubscribe: Asking for their email address again while they is looking to unsubscribe will irritate not only the user but ESPs also. Keep it one-click easy to unsubscribe process.
Best practices by ESPs
Email Service Providers are the gatekeepers that you need to please if you want to get your emails delivered to inbox. So, keep these best practices in mind before sending out emails.
5 ways to reach more inboxes
Track your missing and inbox placement rates
Always keep track of the inbox placement rates. You can get results only if know that you’re doing everything right. Monitoring these critical rates allows you to understand the current email status.
Don’t ignore authentication protocols
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Don’t ignore these protocols as they’re the foundations of strong email deliverability. They help in legitimizing your emails to ESPs by protecting them from scammers.
List hygiene
Keep your subscriber list clean. Remove inactive subscribers, unknown emails, and spam traps. This will help in improving your sender reputation and reaching more inboxes.
Sender reputation
ESPs identify whether you’re legitimate with the help of sender reputation score. They’ll place your emails either in inbox or spam depending upon your reputation. So, it’s a no-brainer to monitor your score 24/7.
Know if you’re blacklisted
Mailbox providers keep a list of spammers they know and they block the emails coming from them. Use free tools like Senderscore to check if your IP is blacklisted. If yes, ensure you follow their specific delisting requirements.
Final thoughts
Irrespective of the roles you lead, email deliverability is a critical aspect if you deal with emails as an outreach channel. It determines whether your emails reach their intended recipients and directly impacts the success of your email campaigns.
Now, Sarah understands this too well. She’s on the path to getting her emails delivered and achieving good email deliverability rates for her emails.
Understanding the difference between email deliverability and email delivery, knowing how to check your email deliverability, and being aware of the factors that can affect it are all crucial for optimizing your email marketing efforts.
