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Deliverability

What is deliverability​

Deliverability is the ability of an email to successfully reach the recipient's inbox, without being marked as spam or blocked by email service provider filters.
It is a key concept in email marketing and depends on several factors, which can be grouped into three main categories:

1- LIST MANAGEMENT

Managing recipients, from acquisition to unsubscribe:

  • List hygiene: Sending emails to inactive or non-existent addresses increases the risk of being flagged as a spammer.
  • User engagement: If many recipients ignore or mark emails as spam, deliverability is negatively affected.

2- CONTENT

What recipients see, including copy and design:

  • Content quality: Emails containing too many spam trigger words, suspicious links, excessive weight, too many images, or inconsistent content may be blocked.
  • Recognizable sender: This is the primary factor influencing email opens (and helps prevent being marked as Spam).

3- TECHNICAL ASPECTS

Delivery policies of the ESP, authentication, and reputation:

  • Sender reputation: If the domain or IP address used to send the email has a poor reputation, messages may be filtered.
  • Email authentication: Technologies such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC help prove that emails originate from a trusted source.
  • Brand identity: In the email ecosystem, brand identity is also reflected in the headers and authentication of emails.

Improving deliverability means adopting practices that ensure emails are successfully delivered and read by recipients.
Every undelivered email represents a missed opportunity to boost performance - that is, to drive engagement, increase conversions, and generate revenue.
Every additional email that reaches the inbox is a chance to improve key performance indicators (open rate, click rate, engagement, conversions). This leads to more recipient interactions and a higher likelihood that future emails will also be delivered successfully.

warning

Deliverability should not be confused with Delivery, which refers to the "delivery rate."
While the delivery rate may affect and be affected by deliverability, they are not the same. An email can have a 99.9% delivery rate and still end up in the spam folder, meaning it won’t be seen or read by recipients.