10 Primary Reasons for a Low Email Deliverability Rate

An email holds its true worth when it reaches the inbox of the intended target. However, in the vast world of email marketing, billions of emails are sent and received each day, but many of them end up being ineffective. Even if an email is delivered, it may still end up in the recipient's spam or junk folder or get blocked entirely. Furthermore, a high volume of spam and junk emails can harm a sender's reputation, leading to further deliverability issues.


This has made it even more difficult for marketers to succeed. Email deliverability and reaching a subscriber's inbox are not the same thing. If a marketer cannot achieve the latter, email marketing becomes a colossal waste of time and resources. Let's start by defining email deliverability.

Email deliverability is crucial for the success of any email marketing campaign. It refers to the ability to ensure that emails are not only delivered to the intended recipients but also make it to their inboxes instead of bouncing back or getting marked as spam. It's important to note that email deliverability and delivered are two separate terms that hold different meanings in the world of email marketing.

Delivered describes how many emails were completely transferred to the intended recipient’s mailbox provider. This does not mean that the email made it to the recipient’s inbox.
Deliverability is the measure (usually expressed as a percentage) of how many emails actually make it into the inbox. This is usually broken down into open-and-click statistics.

When it comes to delivering an email to the recipient's inbox, there are three key players involved in the process:

Senders : These are the businesses or individuals who send the email.
Gateways : Companies that provide email delivery services and make it possible to send email.
Recipients : The people who are intended to receive the email, such as prospects, customers, or clients.

Each of these parties can be further categorized as follows:

An email travels through several internal filters between the sender and the recipient, which we call gateways. After composing an email, the sender hits the send button, and the email has to pass through Internet Service Provider (ISP) checks and filters. At this stage, the email is delivered, but it is yet to be confirmed whether it has reached the recipient's inbox.

The email message is formatted using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for transmission over the internet. The recipient's mail server then looks up the domain portion of the receiver's email address on a Domain Name System (DNS) server to determine which Mail Exchanger (destination mail server) should be contacted to deliver the message. Both the sending and receiving servers use the SMTP protocol to transmit the message.

In the third step, the recipient's server accepts and delivers the message, which is received using standards like the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) for download and reading.

Non-maintenance of your email list health, use of non-permission-based data or letting the quality of your email content slide can damage your sender's reputation in a way that can be difficult to repair.

If you are experiencing an email deliverability issue, you may notice some of the following signs:

As a marketer you need to evaluate your existing sender reputation by the following factors:

• Open Rate: This is a direct indication of the quality of the list you are targeting. Single opt-in lists normally have lower open rates than double opt-in.
• Recipient Engagement: This determines how long your subscribers are looking at the content of the email
• Email Content: Whether the content being promoted is relevant to the audience targetted
• Spam Traps: A spam trap looks like a real email address, but it doesn't belong to a real person and can't be used for any kind of communication.
The above-mentioned factors contribute to how the mailbox providers treat you. A strong built up in these factors shows a positive sender reputation.
• Unsubscription: Taking away the control from readers to unsubscribe doesn’t help a business in any way. It increases the chances of emails transferring into the spam folder and tarnishes your reputation.

Quick fix:
• Authenticating your domain verifies your identity and is good for your sender’s reputation.
• Warm-up your IP address. Sending emails in bulk from a new IP address can mark you as suspicious and hamper your sender’s reputation.
• Eliminate invalid, inactive, and spam addresses from your email list to keep it tidy.
• Use the double opt-in feature to ensure that the recipient wants to receive your emails. It also helps to avoid spam traps and only verified and interested people are added to your subscription list.
• Provide a single-click to unsubscribe option to your readers. Or you might end up getting blocked, which is worse for your reputation.

A recipient marking an email as spam is the strongest negative signal to mailbox providers about your email. Complaint rates above 0.2% are considered high and may result in poor deliverability. In the case of mailbox providers, like Gmail, a spam rate as low as .08% can start to affect your deliverability, which is why you need to keep a close eye on it.

A lot of factors affect your complaint rates. Some of them include incorrect domain names; getting flooded with too many emails; Irrelevant and too lengthy content; not consciously opting in, or opting in for only one company rather than companies under the same parent company; no option, a difficult process for opting out of emails. All of these can annoy recipients, putting you in serious trouble.

Quick Fix:
• The recipients do not favor an imbalanced frequency of emails. High-frequency emails are annoying, while low-frequency ones feel out of touch and unfamiliar. Try to send a fair amount of emails based on your industry.
• Make sure that your email content is relevant and well optimized.
• Make sure to keep it clear what people are subscribing to. Lying to them or deceiving them into subscribing to your emails can be bad.
• Contacting non-subscribers should be avoided. The effort isn't worth it if the sender is not interested in your offer.

A high number of spam trap hits or complaints lead to blacklisting of your IP or sending domain. The mailbox providers monitor such lists to determine which senders to block or filter from their user inbox. You can avoid blacklists by sending relevant content to recipients who have recently engaged with your emails.

Quick fix:
• You can avoid blacklists by sending relevant content to recipients who have recently engaged with your emails.
• It's a good idea to keep a regular check on the list of organizations using DNS-based blacklists which are available to protect recipients from a lot of spam reports. You need to make sure that your IP is not on the list.

“The more, the merrier” should not mean bulking up your list with every email address that you can get your hands on. If you only focus on the quantity of subscribers’ list, the quality gets compromised. The quality of your email list decides whether your email will land in the inbox, spam or junk. A poor list can increase your bounce rates, ultimately leading to a lower deliverability rate.

Quick fix:
• Use Email Verification services to regularly clean and update your email lists to ensure that every email ID in your list is valid.

• Don’t buy mailing lists from unknown sources as they have low credibility. You need to be very precise with your list to avoid complications. In addition to that, GDPR clarifies that you need the individual's consent before sending them an email.
• Instead, build a quality email list with the email addresses of people who might actually be interested in your emails.

Email authentication can be highly technical and extremely confusing. Even the most seasoned security professionals need help both navigating this space and explaining it in digestible yet accurate terms to non-technical colleagues.

Improper authentication setup or not updating DNS changes can make your emails end up in the spam folder. Taking good care of emails is necessary for a healthy deliverability rate.

Quick fix:
• Make sure to set up email authentication protocols. There are three primary methods of authentication: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These email authentication protocols are the technical way to ensure that an email is not forged. So that no one can pretend to be you and commit fraud under your name.

Email as a medium provides a very high return on investment, but the next time you initiate one, do consider the above-mentioned factors and come out with true colors of success.

To improve the effectiveness of the grocery store ad, simplify the content and focus on a few key items presented in a clear and easy-to-read format. By doing so, the reader will be more likely to engage with the email and be enticed to click through for more information.

Example 2