Email Deliverability

A measure of how successfully emails reach recipients' inboxes instead of spam folders.

What is Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability is the measure of how many of your emails actually reach the inbox instead of ending up in spam or getting blocked entirely. It’s not enough for your emails to be “delivered” (accepted by the recipient’s server). True deliverability is about inbox placement—ensuring that your carefully crafted messages land where people will actually see them.

Why it matters

Good deliverability is the foundation of a successful email strategy. You can write the most engaging subject lines, design beautiful templates, and offer irresistible deals, but if your emails never hit the inbox, none of that matters. Poor deliverability directly impacts revenue, brand trust, and customer engagement. On the flip side, strong deliverability helps maximize ROI on every campaign you send.

How it works

Mailbox providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo assess each sender based on a range of factors:

Reputation: Your history as a sender—complaints, engagement, bounce rates.
Authentication: Whether you've set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Content: Whether your emails look like spam (keywords, formatting, image/text ratio).
Engagement: How recipients interact with your emails—open, click, reply, delete, or mark as Spam.

If too many people mark your emails as spam, or if you keep hitting Invalid Emails, your deliverability will drop.

Examples

A clean, segmented newsletter consistently landing in Gmail’s Primary inbox.
An ecommerce campaign marked as spam after users reported irrelevant offers.
A domain with no authentication records having most emails rejected.

Best practices

Authenticate every sending domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Segment your audience to send relevant content.
Maintain List Hygiene to reduce bounces.
Monitor complaints and suppress disengaged users.

FAQs

What’s the difference between delivery and deliverability?
Delivery simply means the recipient’s server accepted the email. Deliverability goes further—it measures whether the email actually reached the inbox or got filtered into spam or junk folders.

How do I know if my deliverability is poor?
Signs include a sudden drop in open rates, high bounce rates, or user complaints. Using deliverability monitoring tools can also help you test where your emails are landing across providers.

Does sending from a dedicated IP improve deliverability?
It can, but only if managed properly. A dedicated IP gives you full control of reputation, but if you send low volume or don’t warm it up correctly, it may hurt more than it helps.