Digital marketing term
Deliverability
Deliverability is the email marketing concept that describes the rate at which sent emails reach a recipient's actual inbox rather than a spam folder, along with the factors behind that process.
Detailed explanation
This concept is a multi-dimensional performance indicator that covers the sending domain's reputation, authentication records (such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC), list quality, and recipient engagement history.
Low engagement rates, high complaint rates, or poor-quality or purchased lists can damage this reputation and cause emails to be routed to spam, which hurts overall campaign performance.
Protecting this reputation requires regular list cleaning, correct authentication configuration, and sending only to genuinely engaged recipients; unsubscribe rate and complaint rate are early warning signals of this health.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does deliverability decline?
- Poor-quality lists, low engagement rates, and incomplete authentication configuration damage sender reputation and lower deliverability.
- How is deliverability protected?
- Regular list cleaning, correctly configuring SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication records, and sending only to relevant recipients are required.
Related terms
Internal links for the topic cluster — read these concepts together.
- Open RateOpen Rate is a core email marketing metric that shows the percentage of recipients who opened a sent email campaign.
- Unsubscribe RateUnsubscribe Rate is the metric that shows the share of recipients who unsubscribed from a list after receiving an email campaign, relative to the total number of recipients it was sent to.
- SegmentationSegmentation is the approach of dividing a target audience into smaller, more homogeneous groups based on shared demographic, behavioral, or interest-based traits.
- Email CTREmail CTR is the metric that shows the share of recipients who clicked a link within an email campaign, relative to the total number of emails sent or opened.