Terms

Email Deliverability Rate

Email deliverability rate is the percentage of emails sent in a campaign that are successfully accepted by a recipient's mail server. This metric measures how many of your emails did not result in a hard or soft bounce, which can occur for reasons ranging from an invalid address to a full inbox.

Factors Affecting Email Deliverability Rate

Your sender reputation, determined by your domain and IP history, is a critical factor. ISPs track metrics like spam complaints and sending volume to score your trustworthiness. The quality of your email list is also vital, as sending to invalid addresses causes high bounce rates.

Technical elements like email authentication (SPF, DKIM) play a huge role in proving your legitimacy. Your email content and recipient engagement are also closely monitored. Low open rates can cause your emails to be filtered directly into junk folders.

Best Practices for Improving Email Deliverability

To ensure your emails consistently land in the inbox, it's crucial to adopt a set of best practices. These strategies focus on building a strong sender reputation and maintaining a healthy relationship with your subscribers, which directly impacts your deliverability.

  • Authentication: Implement protocols like SPF and DKIM to verify your sender identity and protect your domain.
  • Hygiene: Regularly clean your email list by removing inactive subscribers and hard bounces to improve metrics.
  • Content: Personalize emails with relevant information to boost engagement rates and your sender reputation.
  • Unsubscribe: Provide a clear and simple one-step process for users to opt-out, reducing spam complaints.
  • Cadence: Optimize your sending frequency to keep subscribers engaged without overwhelming their inboxes.

Email Deliverability Rate vs. Email Open Rate

While both are key email marketing metrics, they measure different stages of campaign success.

  • Deliverability: This metric tracks the percentage of emails successfully reaching the recipient's mail server. While crucial for gauging technical success and sender reputation, a high rate doesn't guarantee inbox placement over the spam folder. Enterprises often prioritize this to ensure large-scale campaigns are technically sound.
  • Open Rate: This measures the percentage of delivered emails that recipients open, reflecting engagement. It helps assess subject line and content effectiveness but can be skewed by email client privacy settings. Mid-market companies often focus on this metric to optimize content and measure audience interest.

Common Challenges in Email Deliverability

Navigating the path to the inbox is fraught with obstacles that can derail even the most well-crafted campaigns. Marketers often grapple with a mix of technical and engagement-based hurdles that can prevent messages from reaching their intended audience.

  • Filters: Aggressive spam algorithms that block emails or divert them to junk folders based on content and sender history.
  • Bounces: High rates of undeliverable emails due to invalid addresses or temporary server issues, which harm sender reputation.
  • Reputation: A poor sender score, influenced by high complaint rates and low engagement, leading to ISP blocking.
  • Authentication: Lacking proper verification like SPF or DKIM, which makes emails appear suspicious to mail servers.

Tools and Metrics for Monitoring Email Deliverability Rate

This is how you can effectively monitor your email deliverability rate.

  1. Verify your mailing list to remove invalid or inactive email addresses before sending any campaigns.
  2. Implement email authentication protocols like SPF and DKIM to establish a trustworthy sender reputation.
  3. Use your email service provider’s built-in analytics to track performance after each send.
  4. Analyze key metrics including delivery, bounce, open, and unsubscribe rates to understand engagement and list health.
  5. Regularly review these reports to identify negative trends and optimize your strategy for better inbox placement.

Frequently Asked Questions about Email Deliverability Rate

How does sender reputation affect deliverability?

Your sender reputation is a score ISPs use to gauge trustworthiness. A poor reputation from high bounce rates or spam complaints causes ISPs to filter your emails into junk or block them entirely, directly harming your deliverability rate and campaign reach.

Why do my emails go to spam despite a high deliverability rate?

A high deliverability rate confirms your email reached the server, not the inbox. Spam filters analyze content, links, and engagement signals. If these factors seem suspicious or low-quality, your message can still be routed to the junk folder despite successful delivery.

Does a low open rate hurt my email deliverability?

Yes, consistently low open rates signal to ISPs that recipients are not engaged with your content. This can damage your sender reputation over time, leading to more of your future emails being automatically filtered into spam folders, thus lowering overall deliverability.

Other terms

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Technographics

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Load Testing

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Inventory Management

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Time on Site

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Drip Campaign

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Lead Enrichment Software

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Lead Enrichment Software

Mobile Compatibility

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Lead Velocity Rate

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Text message marketing

Text message marketing is a strategy where businesses send promotional messages, offers, and updates to customers via SMS or MMS.

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Objection Handling in Sales

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End of Quarter

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B2B Marketing KPIs

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Buyer Journey

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Buyer Journey

Intent leads

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Average Selling Price

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Lead Scoring

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Closing Ratio

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Customer Segmentation

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Customer Segmentation

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free incentive offered to potential customers in exchange for their contact details, like an email, to generate sales leads.

Lead Magnet

Buying Criteria

Buying criteria are the specific requirements and standards a customer uses to evaluate products or services before making a decision.

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Lead Qualification

Lead qualification is the process of determining which prospects are most likely to become paying customers based on predefined criteria.

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Sales Objections

Sales objections are reasons or concerns raised by a potential customer as to why they are hesitant or unwilling to make a purchase.

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Analytics Platforms

Analytics platforms are tools that collect and analyze data from various sources, helping businesses track key metrics and make informed decisions.

Analytics Platforms

Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface

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Sales Coach

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SFDC

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Lead Generation

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B2B Data Solutions

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Sales Conversion Rate

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B2B Sales Channels

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Demand Generation

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Price Optimization

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Tokenization

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Generic Keywords

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Warm Email

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Quarterly Business Review

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Ballpark

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Decision Maker

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AI Sales Script Generator

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Fault Tolerance

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Sales Strategy

A sales strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a business will sell its products or services to achieve its revenue goals.

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Software as a Service

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud-based model where users subscribe to an application and access it over the internet.

Software as a Service

Email Personalization

Email personalization uses subscriber data—like their name, interests, or past behavior—to create highly relevant and targeted email campaigns.

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Marketing Operations

Marketing Operations (MOps) is the engine of a marketing team, managing the technology, processes, and people to run campaigns effectively.

Marketing Operations

Customer Churn Rate

Customer churn rate is the percentage of subscribers or customers who cancel their service with a company during a given time frame.

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Lead List

A lead list is a curated database of potential customers (leads) with contact information and other key data for sales and marketing outreach.

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Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM analyzes customer data to uncover actionable insights, helping businesses make smarter decisions and improve customer interactions.

Analytical CRM

Call Analytics

Call analytics is the practice of analyzing phone call data to extract insights, track key metrics, and improve overall business performance.

Call Analytics

Email Cadence

An email cadence is a scheduled sequence of emails sent to prospects over a specific period to nurture leads and drive engagement.

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Sales Productivity

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B2B Sales

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Predictive Customer Lifetime Value

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Follow-up

A follow-up is a communication sent after an initial interaction to continue the conversation, provide more value, or prompt a response.

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Triggers

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Value-Added Reseller

A Value-Added Reseller (VAR) is a company that adds features or services to an existing product, then resells it as an integrated solution.

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Demand

Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.

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Landing Pages

A landing page is a standalone web page created for a marketing campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after clicking an ad or email link.

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Personalization in Sales

Personalization in sales means tailoring outreach to a prospect's specific needs, interests, and context to make communication more relevant.

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B2B Leads

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GDPR Compliance

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Scalability

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Branded Keywords

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Contact Discovery

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Needs Assessment

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Account Match Rate

Account match rate is the percentage of target accounts successfully identified and matched against a specific database or data provider.

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Custom API integration

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B2B Demand Generation

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Data Warehousing

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Sales Cycle

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Ramp Up Time

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Ramp Up Time

Sales Prospecting

Sales prospecting is the process of identifying potential customers, or prospects, and initiating contact to convert them into paying customers.

Sales Prospecting

Webhooks

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Touchpoints

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Social Selling

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Social Selling

Sales Kickoff

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Sales Kickoff

Inbound Lead Generation

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Trade Shows

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User-generated Content

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System of Record

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System of Record

Email Engagement

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Email Engagement

ETL

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Digital Contracts

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Personalization

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Personalization

ABM Orchestration

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ABM Orchestration

AI Data Enrichment

AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.

AI Data Enrichment

NoSQL

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NoSQL

Call Disposition

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Call Disposition

Firmographics

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Gone Dark

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Gone Dark

Salesforce Administrator

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Salesforce Administrator

Persona-Based Marketing

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Chatbots

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Data Encryption

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Data Encryption

No Cold Calls

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No Cold Calls

Pipeline Management

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Pipeline Management

Trusted Advisor

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Trusted Advisor

Marketing Attribution Model

A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.

Marketing Attribution Model

Consumer Buying Behavior

Consumer buying behavior is the study of how individuals select, buy, and use products and services to satisfy their needs and desires.

Consumer Buying Behavior

Browser Compatibility

Learn about browser compatibility, including understanding the importance, common challenges, best practices, & tools for testing.

Browser Compatibility

Account-Based Everything

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Account-Based Everything