This is a basic email deliverability guide where we will explain its definition and other essential key factors and learn how to improve email deliverability for successful email marketing. In 2023, about 4.37 billion global email users exist, which is set to grow to about 4.89 billion users by 2027. With such a huge amount of email users all over the world, thriving email marketing is a must.
If you are engaged in email marketing or about to start, then it is a must to learn about the key metrics to measure its success. And deliverability is a crucial KPI (Key performance indicator) to measure and sustain successful email marketing.
This blog will discuss email deliverability in-depth so we can understand how to improve it in the right way.
Table of Contents
- What is Email Deliverability?
- Difference Between Delivery and Deliverability
- Email Deliverability Rate Test
- What is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
- How to Improve Deliverability
- Wrap Up
What is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability is the capacity to deliver emails to the recipient’s inbox successfully. It only counts the emails that land in the recipient’s inbox and not the junk or spam folder. Whereas email delivery means the emails that are delivered to the intended recipient’s mailbox (including both inbox and spam).
Simply deliverability meaning; only counting the emails that go straight to the receiver’s “inbox” folder.
Now, you may ask about the difference between email delivery and deliverability. Let’s clarify it in the next section.
Difference Between Delivery and Deliverability
| Delivery | vs | Deliverability |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox and spam both | Counts emails in | Only inbox |
| Only ensure that the emails land in the recipient’s mailbox, where it doesn’t matter. | Main focus | Avoid being spammed, and ensure the emails land in the inbox straight. |
| Higher delivery rate. | Primary target | Maintaining an ideal deliverability rate. |
| Good sender reputation. | Highlighted outcome | Superb sender reputation. |
Email Deliverability Rate Test
To test the email deliverability rate:
- First, start by dividing the number of emails delivered by the number of total emails sent.
- After that, end the calculation by multiplying the previous result by 100; the result you’ll get is the percentage of the email deliverability rate.
Email deliverability rate example
For instance, assume some random numbers and manually calculate the email deliverability rate. Suppose you have sent a total of 10,000 emails, and among those, 9,800 emails were delivered. Then your email deliverability rate will be:
9800/10000 = 0.98 X 100 = 98%
So, the deliverability rate for 10000 sent emails and 9800 delivered emails is 98%.
This way, you can check your email deliverability manually or you can go for third-party email deliverability test tools.
What is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
To learn how to improve your email deliverability, you need to be aware of the email deliverability rates. You won’t be able to compare your deliverability rate’s position without knowing which deliverability percentage indicates which state: average, good, ideal, or poor. Though there is no solid benchmark for good email deliverability, according to several email campaign reports, we can come to some assumptions about good email deliverability rate:
- An 85%-95% is a pretty good email deliverability rate.
- A rate of 96% to 99% for deliverability is ideal.
- A less than 80% email deliverability rate indicates improvement requirements.
What to do next?
Now, you check your email deliverability rate and compare the percentage to see in which state it’s in right now. If it’s 85% or more, then you’re doing good. But if you see the deliverability rate is less than 85%, then you might have to work a bit to pull it up to that good rate. According to the given findings, 80% to 84% is an average email deliverability rate. If it’s less than 80%, detect the lackings and causes of low email deliverability and rethink your email marketing strategy. After that, work on fixing deliverability troubleshoots to improve email deliverability.
How to Improve Deliverability
Have you tested your email deliverability rate yet? Did you get a deliverability rate that is less than 80%? Or, you are in an average deliverability state between 70%-84% and setting your target on reaching the ideal email deliverability rate point? Work efficiently on increasing your email deliverability because increasing it will lead to an increase in the email deliverability rate.
For that, here is a brief guideline on how to improve email deliverability.
Authenticate and verify your email address
Authentication and verification of an email address are ditching any security-related barriers. So, how do you do it?
Authenticate your emails
Reduce the risk of getting red-flagged for being suspicious or spammy. Authentication of your emails can fix it in a huge way. Following email authentication protocols such as:
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Determines which servers can send emails on your domain’s behalf.
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Checks the legitimacy of an email sender using digital signatures to make sure the message contents haven’t been changed during transit.
These two are authentication methods and assist in stopping email spoofing and shields from illegal phishing attacks.
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance): It is an email security protocol that helps validate email senders’ legitimacy.
It is a security protocol that verifies email senders using the DNS (Domain Name System), along with the previous two SPF and DKIM protocols.
Verify your email address
Another way to authenticate your email address is by verifying your email addresses. Verify by getting a blue checkmark for your business email address, and your email address will be considered a valid source.
Adhere to email compliance regulations
Adhere to email compliance laws and regulations. Familiarize yourself with rules and laws like the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). It’s highly essential to go by the laws to ensure your recipients that their data is collected and stored securely.
Maintain a good email list
Maintain and build a good email list. Regularly check your email list. See who interacts with your emails and who doesn’t. Identify whose email addresses are invalid and causing major delivery failure. Mark such email addresses and clean your email list by removing them. This way, you’ll have a good email list with active recipients, and that surely helps improve email deliverability.
Always use double opt-in
Use double opt-in for users who sign up for your newsletters via the newsletter landing page. Use it to confirm users’ willingness to receive your business newsletters. This helps maintain an engaging and hygienic email list. Plus, the ISPs (Internet service providers) will consider your domain as authentic.
Include an unsubscribe link in email
Always remember to unsubscribe link in an email. It will help identify uninterested recipients. Also, ESPs (Email service providers) take this as a sign of maintaining quality and spam-free email content.
Increase audience engagement
Increase your audience engagement. If your recipients engage with you in a good way and if you can ensure a good engagement rate, then your emails will be able to avoid spam marks. Hence, your emails will land directly in the intended recipient’s inbox folder.
Provide a smooth email customer journey
The key to keeping every email marketing sector in check is to provide a smooth email customer journey. For that, you have to:
- Send quality email content. Craft personalized and highly relevant emails like dynamic emails for your customers. The more your recipients can relate to your emails, the more they’ll engage with your email content. And don’t forget to include all the essential parts of an email.
- Optimize your email content. Maintain a balanced text-to-image ratio and avoid unnecessary HTML.
- Avoid spammy words and overuse of all CAPS and special characters like “$, *, ^” in your email.
- Choose a suitable email design. Make sure that your email templates look eye-catching. Also, don’t forget to make them mobile-friendly.
- Include clear CTAs (calls to action). Easify the process so your recipients can take the desired action without any hassle.
Monitor email marketing KPIs
Monitor your email marketing KPIs on a regular level. And to increase email deliverability, keep your eyes on the following:
- Soft bounce email rate
- Hard bounce rate
- Delivery rate
- Deliverability rate
In addition, check open rates, unsubscribe rates, and click-through rates to find out areas for improvement.
Sender Reputation
Maintaining a good sender reputation also helps improve email deliverability. The benefits are vice versa. If your sender reputation is good, it will also increase your deliverability rate. On the other hand, if your email deliverability rate is good, then it will raise your sender reputation to a superb level. If you follow the above mentioned essentials accordingly, then your sender reputation will be in a good state.
Use a reputable email marketing platform or ESP
Use an email marketing platform or ESP that guarantees a good reputation for email deliverability. For example, MailBluster is not only an affordable email marketing tool but also maintains a standard reputation for email deliverability. This email marketing tool ensures a 97.11% deliverability rate, an ideal percentage for the email deliverability rate. So, choose a reputable email marketing platform or ESPs for your email marketing that will help you improve email deliverability in every email campaign.
IP or domain facts
Monitor your IP address reputation. Regularly check your IP address for blacklisting issues.
Also, consider warming up your IP address whenever you use a new IP address or domain to send emails. Why do it? Because it will help gradually increase the volume of emails sent from that domain or IP, and it will aid in building a good reputation with ISPs.
Wrap Up
A good email deliverability rate means you have a positive sender reputation and a clean email list with engaging recipients. Therefore, email deliverability is considered a crucial email marketing KPI. This blog is presented to draw your attention to the matter and has been discussed in-depth so you can learn how to improve email deliverability by taking necessary actions. Take all the ideas and implement them accordingly, along with choosing a reputed email marketing tool like our MailBluster that ensures a higher email deliverability rate.
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