Email deliverability: Everything you need to know
Tags: devops, webdev, tutorial, programming
Published: 2022-09-13 08:02:14

In the fight against spam, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) put more and more restrictions on access to the user’s mailbox. This all works to the users’ benefit – it lets them have a clean mailbox with content they want to receive and an experience they expect. 

But time and time again, important messages miss users’ inboxes due to sometimes foolish mistakes the senders make when in a hurry or due to lack of experience. Don’t let this happen to you. 

Bear with us as we cover the basics of email deliverability, and suggest what to focus on and what to avoid in this 2022 updated guide. 

## What is email deliverability?
Before diving into all of the ins and outs of email deliverability let’s define what it is. In layman’s terms, it is measuring and having solid knowledge of how well your marketing or transaction emails perform in terms of being delivered to a receiver’s inbox, thus also being known as inbox deliverability. 

### Email deliverability vs email delivery

These terms often get confused for being the same but are two separate things and it’s important to distinguish between them. 

Email delivery is whether the recipient’s mail server accepted the actual email file and delivered it to the mailbox no matter the folder. 

With email deliverability, the server accepts the file and delivers it to the mailbox, but the question is if it was placed in the inbox or spam, social, updates, or any other folder that rarely gets checked by the recipient. 

So in other words email deliverability is the actual ability to get emails to land in the recipient’s inbox.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/x5cl3tj8an2yewrxg3xr.png)
## Why email deliverability matters?
A user forgot her password? Send her an email with reset instructions. 

A new feature was just launched? Deliver the good news to your subscribers’ inboxes. 

The traffic on the blog is slower than usual? Send a roundup of the latest articles to your mailing list. Companies send emails all the time. 

Yet, according to the [latest research from Influencer Marketing Hub](https://influencermarketinghub.com/email-marketing-stats/#:~:text=As%20of%20February%202020%2C%20the,from%2016.3%25%20in%20July%202019.), only 79.6% of legit emails reach their final destination. This means that, on average, every 3 out of 20 users (or a whooping 15,000+ users in a seven-digit community): [2022 Delivery Benchmark – Validity](https://www.validity.com/resource-center/state-of-email-2022-mastering-the-new-email-landscape/)

- won’t regain access to their account immediately and might abandon your platform
- won’t know about that shiny new feature you’ve worked on for months and might flip to competitors offering the very same or even a less functional option
- won’t be reminded of your existence and won’t even consider one of your paid plans
If you can afford not to worry about it, we envy you. Most content specialists, however, will do their best to boost their delivery even by a single percent. 

At Mailtrap, we deal with emails daily and we wanted to share the key things to consider when trying to improve deliverability.
## What is a good email deliverability rate?
When it comes to determining what is a good email deliverability rate the answer is not a straightforward one. 

In general, to get the most out of your marketing campaigns it is recommended to reach a deliverability rate anywhere between 85% and as high as 95%. 

However, each business has its unique aspects therefore the number can vary. 

What is recommended is to research your industry to understand how competitors perform and analyze your current email inbox placement rate and all the metrics related to it such as engagement rates, and what can be improved for better results.

After that, an email deliverability benchmark should be set and your email marketing team should collectively work to reach it.
### Marketing emails deliverability rate
Generally, marketing emails tend to have a low engagement rate and are [opened 20-25% of the time](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/average-email-open-rate-benchmark). 

The good news is that for most industries, an open rate that is over 30% it’s already considered to be good. 

So if you used an email warm-up service to get an extra boost and only got a 5-10% increase in open rate, that is a solid result. 
### Transactional emails deliverability rate
With transaction emails, it’s a different story since most of the time users are expecting to receive them and consider them to be legitimate emails before they are even delivered. 


Thus most transaction emails have deliverability and open rate as high as 80-85%. But just because they have a higher rate, due to their nature, doesn’t mean they should be excluded from tests that can always help you reach better results.
 
---
To learn more about how to **test, track and improve email deliverability** read our [in-depth email deliverability guide](https://mailtrap.io/blog/email-deliverability/) on Mailtrap's Blog.