Email deliverability is what determines whether your message reaches your audience’s main inbox, and it is one of the most overlooked elements of successful email marketing. In 2024, the average inbox placement rate was around 83% to 84%, meaning roughly one in six marketing emails never reach the inbox and instead get filtered to spam or lost entirely.
It is worth noting that delivery rate, meaning whether an email was accepted by a mail server, is not the same as inbox placement, which refers to where it lands after that. For example, B2B email delivery rates can be very high at around 98% accepted by the server, yet far fewer land in the inbox due to filtering and reputation checks.
Here is how to nail the basics and boost your chances of landing in the inbox.
Clean and Maintain Your Lists
Your email list is your foundation. If it contains many invalid or inactive addresses, your bounce rate increases and your sender reputation drops. Modern benchmarks suggest keeping hard bounces well under 2% whenever possible.
Using real-time verification and regularly removing unengaged contacts not only reduces bounce rates but also helps signal to mailbox providers that your list is healthy and engaged.
Authenticate Your Domain Properly
Email authentication using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC tells inbox providers that your emails are legitimately from you and not forged. Domains that implement these correctly and enforce DMARC see significantly better placement rates, often pushing inbox placement into the mid-eighties or higher.
Without proper authentication, your emails are more likely to be filtered or dropped, especially by major providers such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.
Monitor Your Sender Reputation
Modern email systems score your sending domain and IP address in a similar way to a credit score. High bounce rates, spam complaints, and suspicious sending patterns all damage your score and make future emails harder to reach the inbox. Spam complaints should be kept very low, ideally around 0.1% or below, because crossing thresholds like 0.3% will trigger more aggressive filtering.
Create Content That Engages
Email providers look not only at technical setup but also at how recipients interact with your emails. Higher engagement, such as opens, clicks, and replies, signals that recipients want your messages. Average open rates for B2B email campaigns are around 20% to 30%, and engagement at or above this range supports stronger deliverability.
Avoid spam-focused language, image-heavy layouts, and overly promotional templates that can trigger content-based filters.
Measure, Test, and Improve
Email deliverability is not something you set once and forget. Use reporting tools to monitor inbox placement, bounce rates, and complaint rates, and test variations in subject lines, sending frequency, and content. Many companies do not use inbox placement reporting at all, which means they are operating without visibility.
Small improvements can lead to meaningful gains. Improving warm-up practices and authentication alone can lift inbox placement by 10-12% or more.