What is Email Deliverability?

Email Deliverability is a key metric for all email marketing campaigns, especially crucial in e-commerce. It represents the percentage of sent emails that successfully reach the recipient’s inbox, rather than getting blocked by email service providers or landing in the spam folder.

Formula

Email Deliverability = (Number of emails delivered / Number of emails sent) x 100%.

Example

If an e-commerce store sends out 1000 promotional emails, and 950 of those reach the inboxes of the intended recipients, then the Email Deliverability rate is 95%.

Why is Email Deliverability important?

• Accomplishing high email deliverability is vital for e-commerce businesses because it directly impacts their email marketing performance which ultimately affects sales and customer engagement.
• Revenue: Since email marketing often drives significant portions of online revenue, emails that do not reach their intended audience represent missed sales opportunities.
• Customer Engagement: High deliverability rates ensure that the company’s message gets to the customers, increasing opportunities for customer engagement.
• Reputation: Regularly landing in spam or being blocked tarnishes a company’s reputation, reducing the chances of their future emails being opened.

Which factors impact Email Deliverability?

• Sender Reputation: This defines how trustworthy the email service providers consider you, based on your past email sends.
• IP Reputation: A reputation score assigned to your IP address based on deliverability history of emails from this address.
• Content Quality: High-quality, relevant content is more likely to avoid spam filters.
• Email list quality: Lists with many inactive or invalid addresses can negatively impact deliverability.

How can Email Deliverability be improved?

• List Management: Regularly update your email list to account for changes in email addresses.
• Relevant Content: Send emails that recipients find valuable, so they’re less likely to mark them as spam.
• Authentication: Use email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM and DMARC to improve credibility with email servers.

What is Email Deliverability’s relationship with other metrics?

Email Deliverability has a huge co-relation with other pertinent e-commerce metrics. If your emails are frequently landing into people’s inboxes, your open rates, click rates, and conversion rates are likely to rise. In contrast, poor deliverability can limit the reach of your email campaigns, resulting in lower engagement and conversion rates, impacting your ROI.