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Delivery and placement of emails
Just sending an email does not mean that the email will reach its destination. Practice shows that many emails are accepted, but do not arrive in the recipient's inbox.
It can also be observed that not infrequently 1 % or in some cases even more of all emails sent are simply lost on the way to the recipient.
What is email deliverability?
Email deliverability refers to the ability of your emails to successfully land in the recipient's inbox, rather than being filtered into the spam folder or another subfolder.
To understand deliverability fully, it's helpful to distinguish email delivery from email placement:
- Email delivery is the first step — it means your email was accepted by the recipient's mail server. If the server rejects the email (due to a non-existent address, full inbox, poor sender reputation, etc.), the message is never delivered at all.
- Email placement comes after successful delivery. It determines where the email ends up inside the recipient's mailbox — ideally, in the primary inbox, not in spam or promotions folders.
Good deliverability and placement means your messages are visible and accessible, increasing the chances they'll be opened and acted upon. Poor deliverability or placement results in emails being buried or ignored, even if they were technically delivered.
Why is deliverability important?
For businesses and professional email senders, high deliverability is essential for:
- Maximizing engagement (opens, clicks, conversions)
- Maintaining sender reputation
- Achieving strong ROI from email campaigns
Even the best-crafted emails are ineffective if your audience never sees them.
What affects deliverability?
Several key factors influence whether your emails reach the inbox:
- Sender reputation: Based on your sending history, bounce rates, and spam complaints
- Authentication: Proper setup of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
- Email content: Avoiding spammy language or suspicious links
- List quality: Using clean, opted-in email lists
- Engagement metrics: Higher open and click rates can signal trustworthy content to email providers
In short, deliverability is not just about sending your emails — it's about ensuring they are seen and, ideally, placed in the inbox. Investing in good practices ensures that your emails arrive where they matter most — in the inbox.
The most important thing for us when testing email marketing providers is where an email is placed after successful delivery.
In most cases, delivery is not a problem. However, many providers of corresponding services have difficulty with email placement, as our tests show. Sent emails are flagged as spam or deleted after arrival because of the email server's poor IP reputation or other problems.