Chapter 01
The legendary rock band Led Zeppelin sang about communication breakdowns driving you insane. Just imagine what could happen if your email communication efforts broke down?
The steps you take to make sure your messages reach the inbox are known collectively as the practice of improving email deliverability. We surveyed more than 1,100 email senders in the U.S., France, Germany, Spain, and the U.K. to find out how they handle the intricacies of staying out of spam and achieving inbox placement.
The truth is – too many senders are flying blind. But not to worry. We’re here to help guide you towards a perfect landing in the email inbox.
Email communications are key to keeping customers engaged, informed, safe, and happy, but a lot can go haywire on the way to the inbox. Here are some scenarios in which deliverability issues could cause serious headaches for businesses. These are just some of the situations you can prevent when you understand email deliverability and optimize your sending strategy:
The big Black Friday promotional campaign you expected to drive tons of sales ends up getting filtered into junk folders.
You just launched a new mobile app, but for some reason, account registration emails are getting blocked by a major mailbox provider.
A seemingly small number of contacts marked your emails as spam. Now your open and click rates look much lower.
Here are a few eye-opening stats from our survey of email senders around the world:
don’t know what their email delivery rate is actually measuring.
say they rarely or never conduct email list hygiene.
call “staying out of spam” a major deliverability challenge.
are not monitoring their reputation with major mailbox providers like Gmail.
Email deliverability might seem like it’s super technical and only happens behind the scenes. But the decisions we make as email marketers have a huge impact on whether messages reach the inbox or end up in spam. From building your list and increasing engagement to avoiding spam complaints, every campaign has the potential to help or hurt your deliverability. Emails that miss the inbox are missed opportunities to connect. So, if you want email marketing to make a difference, deliverability should be a priority.
Our survey also found 78.5% of senders would rate the importance of deliverability an 8 out of 10 or higher. However, only 27% of respondents feel very confident in their knowledge of deliverability.
Thankfully, there’s good news. While email deliverability may seem like a complex and confusing topic, much of what you can do to prevent problems and improve your ability to reach the inbox is simple.
The advice in this report will prompt you to make positive changes that are better for your business, better for mailbox providers, and better for anyone receiving your emails.
