Email Deliverability: 101 Guide for 2024

What Is Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability is a term that's often thrown around in marketing circles, but what does it really mean? In essence, deliverability refers to the ability of your messages to successfully reach the inboxes of your intended recipients. It's not to be confused with the delivery rate, which simply measures the number of messages sent versus the number of messages that didn't bounce back.

Now, you might be wondering, "Why is email deliverability important?" The answer is simple. If your messages are not landing in your recipients' inboxes, you're missing out on potential engagement, leads, and conversions. In other words, all your efforts in crafting compelling email campaigns could be going to waste.

How Is Email Deliverability Measured?

Mail deliverability is measured using a metric called the Inbox Placement Rate (IPR). The IPR is the percentage of messages that have been successfully delivered to the recipients' inboxes, as opposed to being marked as spam or bouncing back. To calculate it, you simply divide the number of messages delivered to the inbox by the number of messages sent, and then multiply the result by 100.

For example, if you send 1000 messages and 900 of them reach the recipients' inboxes, your IPR would be 90%.

When asked, "What is a good email deliverability rate?" most experts recommend aiming for a deliverability rate of 95% as the best email deliverability rate you should realistically strive to achieve.

That said, every single IPR percentage point counts because it can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Imagine a business that sends 10,000 messages per month, with a current Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) of 80%. We’ll assume a conversion rate of 2% and that each conversion generates $50 in revenue. By boosting the IPR from 80% to 85%, the business can earn an additional $6,000 annually.

How to Achieve a High Email Deliverability Rate?

Achieving a high mail deliverability rate is not a one-time task, but rather a continuous process that requires a multi-pronged approach. In this section of our mail deliverability guide, we'll explore the key strategies and best practices that can help you improve mail deliverability so that your messages land in your recipients' inboxes.

Maintain a Good Sender Reputation

Your sender reputation is like your credit score in the email world. It's a measure of the trustworthiness of your emails in the eyes of Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Whenever you send an email, the message is forwarded by multiple ISPs before it reaches the recipient's inbox. These ISPs check where the message comes from and whether the IP address has a good reputation. If the IP address doesn't have a good reputation, the ISPs may decide to block the email, which will negatively impact your email deliverability rate.

ISPs use several factors to determine email deliverability and sender reputation, including:

• The number of messages sent from the IP address
• The number of spam complaints from recipients
• The number of messages that bounce back
• The number of messages that are opened and clicked by recipients
• The presence of the IP address on blacklists

To protect your sender reputation, you should never send messages from a shared IP address because your internet neighbors may engage in activities that could harm your reputation. Instead, it's recommended to use a dedicated IP address, which is reserved solely for your use.

Alternatively, you can use reliable email marketing platform like Mailchimp, Brevo, or Constant Contact. All of these platforms have spent a ton of money to build a strong reputation with ISPs, which means that your messages are more likely to land in the inbox when they originate from their servers. As a nice bonus, email marketing platforms often include various email deliverability tools to help their users monitor and improve this important metric.

Configure Email Authentication Standards

Email authentication standards are used to add legitimacy to your emails, making it easier for ISPs to trust your messages and deliver them directly to your recipients' inboxes. These standards are like ID cards for your messages because they verify the identity of the sender so that the recipient can be confident that the email is legitimate and not a phishing or spam attempt.

The technical foundation of email authentication consists of three main protocols:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Allows you to specify which mail servers are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to the headers of your messages. This signature is linked to your domain name to provide a way to verify that the message was not altered after it was sent.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Provides additional instructions to ISPs on how to handle emails that don't authenticate and also includes reporting capabilities.

The implementation of these standards is a cornerstone of mail deliverability best practices because their absence can lead to a significant decrease in the number of emails that reach the intended recipients' inboxes. In other words, without email authentication standards, your emails are more likely to end up in the spam folder or be blocked altogether.

Keep Your Email List Healthy

Even if your messages are originating from a reputable IP address and are authenticated properly, there's still a lot that you can do to boost your email deliverability. The key is to shift your attention to your list of intended recipients.

Here are some techniques and strategies for list hygiene and management that can help you improve mail deliverability:

1. Get Rid of Inactive or Invalid Email Addresses

It's important to regularly remove inactive or invalid email addresses from your list. Inactive subscribers are those who haven't engaged with your emails for a certain period of time, while invalid addresses are those that have been entered incorrectly, have become obsolete, or no longer exist.

Keeping these addresses on your list can lead to high bounce rates and low engagement, which negatively impact your mail deliverability and sender reputation. The good news is that there are many email deliverability test tools, including VerifiedEmail, that can help you prune your list in no time.

2. Avoid Spam Traps

Spam traps are mail addresses that are set up by ISPs or anti-spam organizations to catch spammers. If you send a message to a spam trap, it can harm your sender reputation and result in a lower IPR. To avoid spam traps, you should regularly test email deliverability and remove all contacts that are flagged accordingly or haven't engaged with you in a long time.

It's also important to use a double opt-in process for new subscribers so that only legitimate addresses are added to your list. This means that after someone signs up for your email list, they receive a confirmation message that they must click on to complete the subscription process.

3. Don't Engage in Shady Practices

While it may be tempting to take shortcuts to boost your email marketing, engaging in shady practices can have serious consequences for your mail deliverability.

For example, you should never purchase an email list to reach more potential customers. Not only is this practice illegal in many countries, but such lists almost always contain many outdated or inaccurately collected addresses, including spam traps.

You also shouldn't write misleading subject lines to boost your open rates. When the subject line doesn't reflect the content of the message, the recipient is more likely to flag the message as spam, and that's the last thing you want to happen.

Conclusion

Email deliverability can make or break your marketing campaign, so learning what it is and how to improve it is essential for any marketer or business owner. And with tools like VerifiedEmail, you can easily test and monitor your mail deliverability to ensure that your messages are reaching your intended recipients.

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2. Best Email Verification Tools