What is a good email deliverability rate or benchmark?

Key findings

• Terminology difference: There's a critical distinction between deliverability (inbox placement) and delivery rate (acceptance by the server, minus bounces). Deliverability is the true measure of success.
• High delivery rates: A good delivery rate (non-bounce rate) typically hovers around 97-99%, indicating a clean and engaged email list.
• Strong deliverability: Inbox placement rates (deliverability) often range from 80-85%, with anything over 89% considered good and 95%+ deemed excellent by many in the industry.
• Industry variability: Benchmarks are not universal and can differ significantly across industries, audience types, and content strategies. For example, some industries might naturally see lower rates due to their content or audience engagement.
• No guarantees: Predicting 100% deliverability or delivery is impossible due to the dynamic nature of ISP filters and recipient behavior.

Key considerations

• Focus on inbox placement: While a high delivery rate is foundational, the ultimate goal is inbox placement. Tools that measure this are crucial for understanding true email performance.
• Internal comparison: Rather than solely relying on external benchmarks, prioritize comparing your current performance against your past metrics to identify trends and improvements. This helps in understanding your unique email deliverability landscape and how it works in the current email marketing landscape.
• List health: Maintaining a clean and healthy email list is paramount for achieving high delivery rates and subsequently, better deliverability. A high bounce rate (hard bounces) is a clear indicator of list decay, which also impacts your soft bounce tolerance.
• Engagement factors: Content relevance, sender reputation, and recipient engagement play significant roles in determining where an email lands. A high engagement rate positively influences your deliverability, as detailed by AgencyAnalytics.

Key opinions

• High delivery expectations: Many marketers consider anything below 99% delivery rate a sign that something is wrong with their sending practices or list health.
• Inbox placement rates: Marketers frequently see inbox placement rates in the 80-85% range, recognizing this as distinct from the higher delivery rates reported by ESPs.
• No single benchmark: There's a widespread acknowledgment that a single, universal deliverability benchmark doesn't truly exist due to varying industry standards and email program specifics.
• Contextual understanding: Marketers emphasize that deliverability heavily depends on external factors such as sender reputation, content quality, and the cleanliness of the recipient data.

Key considerations

• Beyond bounces: While a low bounce rate (high delivery rate) is important, it does not guarantee inbox placement. Marketers need to monitor beyond basic delivery metrics to truly understand their performance.
• Internal metrics over external benchmarks: It is more valuable for marketers to track their own performance trends over time rather than rigidly adhering to generalized industry benchmarks. This is especially true when looking at how to diagnose and improve deliverability and open rates.
• Engagement as a key indicator: Email engagement thresholds, such as open and click rates, are crucial for deliverability monitoring and can indicate how favorably ISPs view your sending practices.
• ESPs limitations: Many Email Service Providers (ESPs) cannot provide granular inbox placement data, focusing primarily on whether an email was delivered or bounced. This limitation necessitates additional tools or strategies for accurate deliverability measurement, which can be found in a guide to email deliverability tests.

Key opinions

• Semantic precision: Experts stress that deliverability refers to inbox placement, while delivery concerns whether the email avoided bounces and was accepted by the recipient network.
• Varying success metrics: While delivery rates for clean lists should be in the high 90s (97-99%), inbox placement (deliverability) typically hovers around 80-85%.
• Context is key: There's no single "baseline" deliverability rate, as it's highly dependent on factors such as industry, specific email practices, and the recipient base.
• Dynamic factors: Deliverability is heavily influenced by outside factors, including sender reputation, the content of the email, and the cleanliness of the email data.

Key considerations

• Beware of guarantees: It is impossible to predict 100% deliverability or delivery due to complex variables, making any such guarantees problematic.
• Non-bounce rate: The term "non-bounce rate" is suggested as a more accurate description for the calculation of sent emails minus bounced emails, emphasizing clarity in metrics, which helps when implementing email sending speed best practices.
• Continuous measurement: Understanding why your email deliverability rate is wrong involves identifying hidden factors that most marketers miss, requiring consistent and detailed analysis.
• Monitoring and adaptation: Given the ongoing confusion about terminology, experts advise email professionals to remain vigilant and adapt their understanding based on evolving industry definitions and practices. This includes keeping an eye on your spam resource activity.

Key findings

• Distinction confirmed: Return Path's documentation explicitly defines deliverability as different from the delivered rate.
• Benchmark ranges: Many industry reports, such as those from EmailTooltester.com, suggest that a deliverability rate over 89% is good, with 95%+ being excellent.
• No single benchmark: Some documentation, like that from Mailmodo, clearly states there's no single, definitive benchmark for a good deliverability rate, highlighting its complexity.
• Technical underpinnings: Key factors influencing deliverability include technical configurations (like DMARC, SPF, DKIM), sender reputation, and content quality.

Key considerations

• Importance of definitions: Understanding the precise definitions of metrics is crucial for interpreting reports and optimizing email programs. This applies to monitoring Google Postmaster Tools and other analytics platforms.
• Proactive hygiene: Documentation often emphasizes the importance of email validation tools and practices to maintain list hygiene and prevent bounces that harm reputation.
• Holistic view: A good deliverability strategy combines technical setup, content optimization, and list management to ensure messages reach the inbox effectively.
• Unsubscribe rates: Klaviyo's documentation recommends aiming for under a 0.3% unsubscribe rate per email campaign, regardless of industry. This indirectly influences deliverability by indicating list health and user satisfaction.