Email Delivery vs. Deliverability: What’s the Difference?
In email marketing, the delivery and deliverability rate do not carry the same meaning, even though senders frequently use them interchangeably. Both are important to track, but succeeding at one is much more impressive than the other. While the delivery rate is a key first step in reaching subscribers, it's a metric where even the average sender can boast a high success rate. Unfortunately, solely depending on the delivery rate is a common mistake.
Source: Henry Gutierrez
The delivery rate, or nonbounce rate, is a metric easily seen in an email service provider (ESP) platform after deploying campaigns. It represents what happens when messages first come in contact with a mailbox provider’s (MBP) gateway. At this point, MBPs can reject emails based on factors such as unknown users or block an entire campaign due to poor sender reputation.
A recent report from Mailchimp shows an average delivery rate of 98 percent, similar to other ESP averages. To be clear, that's the average rate across all senders, with good and poor practices. Imagine a large public high school where the average grade is 98 percent. One could vaguely conclude that the classes are likely not much of a challenge. The point here is that it takes quite a bit to have a poor delivery rate, therefore, having a successful one shouldn't be cause for celebration.
Deliverability, on the other hand, brings visibility into what happens after the email has been accepted into the mailbox provider’s network. Once an email passes the gateway, it can be subjected to hundreds of filters before finally reaching subscribers' inboxes. Bringing transparency to how many messages are landing in the inbox is vital. In Return Path’s 2018 Deliverability Benchmark Report, the average inbox placement rate across all senders was 86 percent. A much more difficult feat.
Aside from accuracy, an important and vital reason to track both metrics is efficiency. In a frequently seen scenario, a marketer may have a 95 percent delivery rate, but a 70 percent inbox placement rate. As low read rates cause panic, one will quickly start to look into tweaking subject lines and content to fix the issue. In reality, subscribers aren't opening emails because messages are buried in the spam folder, possibly due to reputational issues such as spam complaints, spam traps or poor list quality. All are important factors to address, but it's much easier when one can narrow down what to fix quickly. Nobody likes spinning their wheels.
There are a few ways to gain insight into deliverability to ensure you have a proper assessment on delivery success:
Free Postmaster Tools
Below are examples of postmaster tools from mailbox providers that can let you get a gauge of whether your reputation is positive or negative. Based on those findings, you can estimate a range of inbox placement for an email program.
Seed Data
A more precise method to measuring inbox placement is to include a seed list (i.e., a group of monitored email accounts) alongside campaign deployments. This gives a better sense of where messages are landing as inbox and spam folder placement is being measured across several providers to actual email accounts.
To take that a step further, an industry solution you'll be hearing more about is SmartSeeds. SmartSeeds leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence, mimicking real-life subscribers and a variety of engagement levels, to more accurately represent a marketer’s database. Adding engagement-level insight is just another step forward in improving accuracy when measuring inbox placement rates.
Is a successful delivery rate important? Absolutely. A poor delivery rate highlights much bigger, and urgent, issues. However, it only takes average practices in place to be nearly perfect with delivery rates. Deliverability, on the other hand, is more granular in deciphering what's actually happening with deployed messages. It helps tell a more complete story, measuring how many subscribers actually received a message in their inbox. While delivery rates are important to track, deliverability metrics are much more telling of your email program’s success.
Henry Gutierrez is senior email strategist at Return Path, an email deliverability expert that helps marketers drive revenue through email.
- Companies:
- Return Path, Inc.
Henry Gutierrez is senior email strategist at Return Path, an email deliverability expert that helps marketers drive revenue through email.
Through different roles in the industry, Henry Gutierrez has 12-plus years of email expertise combating spam, enforcing compliance, and maximizing email delivery. His current position as Senior Email Strategist for Return Path allows him to leverage his strengths in data analytics and communication. Across several verticals, Henry has helped clients digest actionable recommendations to maximize their email program’s ROI.
