Email deliverability

What is email deliverability?

Email deliverability is the ability of an email to land in the recipient's inbox instead of the spam folder or being rejected outright. It is different from the delivery rate: an email can be "delivered" to the receiving server and still end up in spam, where nobody reads it.

For any team that relies on newsletters, onboarding sequences or automated notifications, deliverability directly affects open rates, conversions and revenue.

What influences deliverability

• Authentication: proof that you are allowed to send for your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
• Sender reputation: the history of your domain and sending IP, based on complaints, bounces and engagement.
• List quality: valid addresses, consented contacts, no purchased lists.
• Content: spammy wording, broken links, heavy images and missing plain-text versions.
• Sending behaviour: sudden volume spikes, irregular cadence and high bounce rates.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC

A basic DMARC record looks like this:

_dmarc.example.com TXT "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]"

Start with p=none to collect reports, then move to quarantine and reject once your legitimate sources are all aligned.

Deliverability vs delivery rate

The delivery rate only tells you that the receiving server accepted the message. Deliverability is about where it ended up. Track inbox placement, spam complaints (keep them well under 0.1%), bounce rate and engagement rather than relying on the delivery rate alone.

Best practices to improve it

• Send from a dedicated domain or subdomain and set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
• Use double opt-in and clean inactive contacts regularly.
• Make unsubscribing easy and honour requests immediately.
• Warm up new domains and IPs gradually before sending at volume.
• Segment your audience and send relevant content to keep engagement high.
• Monitor your reputation with tools such as Google Postmaster Tools.

Email deliverability at BeBranded

Deliverability is a technical and data topic that sits behind every email workflow. Through our automation work, we set up sending domains, DNS records and CRM or email platform connections, so that your automated sequences reliably reach your prospects and customers.