Unlocking Email Deliverability—Best Practices for Marketers
Email deliverability, once something only spoken about by technical gurus, has become a common topic for marketers with recent changes across inbox providers. Whether you’re already experiencing issues or want to prevent them, understanding deliverability—and how to optimize for it—is critical for the success of your marketing, fundraising, or educational program communications plan.
The world of deliverability is both wide and deep. When you consider the many types of emails that are sent, e.g. transactional, marketing, promotional, newsletters, sales lead generation, etc., deliverability becomes an important consideration for all and in different ways. For the discussion at hand, let’s focus on permission-based email: your newsletters, marketing campaigns, and fundraising appeals—and the best practices to improve that.
Email deliverability (whether emails land in the inbox—not just get "delivered") is now critical for marketers. High delivery rates mean nothing if your emails hit spam or promotions folders and never get opened.
Understanding Email Deliverability
First, let’s clarify a key distinction: delivery is not the same as deliverability. Your ESP (like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or HubSpot) reports a delivery rate, which simply tells you if the recipient’s server accepted your email. Deliverability, on the other hand, is about what happens next—whether your message lands in the inbox, gets filtered to promotions, or is relegated to spam. High delivery rates don’t guarantee your emails are being seen by your audience; true deliverability is what drives engagement and results.
Why does this matter for marketers? First, your delivery rate is a meaningless number if your deliverability rate is poor. If you’re trying to get better results from your email program, you need to first worry about deliverability so that you can then confirm that your other engagement tactics are successful. Secondly, best practices for better inbox placement improves results across all providers. When you boost your reputation with Gmail, you often see improvements with Microsoft and others as well. Implementing deliverability best practices enhances your brand reputation and increases the ROI of your email program—already one of the highest-performing digital channels. Finally, reputation matters. Poor deliverability can lead to lower engagement which will spiral your domain reputation and make it more difficult to reach and engage your audience.
Common Myths About Deliverability
Now that you understand why, let’s bust a few myths that have been floating around for a while:
Myth #1: Unsubscribes are bad
In reality, unsubscribes are a healthy signal*. They show that recipients are making an active choice, which ISPs see as a positive sign of list hygiene—not a negative mark against your domain. (*Note: This refers to a “normal” unsubscribe rate. If you have a significant percentage of your list dropping off regularly, there may be some bigger issues. Reach out to an expert for help with that.)
Myth #2: Trigger words like “Free” will send you to spam
There’s no magic word that will doom your email. While certain behaviors can contribute to poor placement, using words like “free” isn’t a standalone trigger if you’re otherwise following best practices.
Myth #3: The Promotions folder = spam folder
The promotions folder has really gotten a bad rep of the years, and for no good reason. This tab (now in Gmail and Apple Mail) is designed for users who want their marketing emails to be found in one place. It’s an organizational system for the user. It’s not a penalty; it’s where users expect to find deals and offers. Landing here is not the same as being flagged as spam.
Myth #4: 100% deliverability is possible
Even the best senders never see true 100% deliverability. Mid-90s is excellent—there will always be outliers due to individual user settings or provider quirks.
Technical Foundations for Deliverability
As a marketer, you don’t need to be an IT expert, but you do need the right technical setup for email deliverability. If you don’t know what any of these items are, it’s OK, that’s what your IT team or webmaster is for, reach out to them for help to set these up:
SPF (Sender Policy Framework): This setting tells ISPs which servers can send on your behalf.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): This record adds a digital signature to your emails to verify your authenticity.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): This domain setting provides instructions for how to handle emails that fail authentication.
BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification): While not required, if you have a major brand, or just one that really needs recognition setting up BIMI allows your logo to appear next to your emails in supported clients—a nice-to-have for brand recognition, especially for larger organizations.
If you use multiple ESPs (which is common in fundraising and e-commerce), make sure all are correctly authenticated. Your IT or technical team can help set this up and it’s the first thing you should work on when you move to a new ESP.
List Management and Engagement
In the world of email, list hygiene is foundational. There is no fix for a bad list, no matter what tactics you employ.
When building your list, always use permission-based practices—never add people who haven’t opted in. If your organization does business in Europe or any country that has GDPR-like policies, you may want to consider implementing double opt-in to ensure list quality and permission. While most US-based companies prefer single opt-in, you should still consider some kind of early sign-up engagement opportunity with your subscriber to ensure their willingness to receive your communications. (It also helps with long-term brand recall!)
Equally important to building a clean list is maintaining that integrity by regularly cleaning your list of inactive or unengaged contacts. It can be very hard to see your subscriber count drop, but subscribers that don’t open your emails will eventually hurt your domain. Unengaged subscribers tell inbox providers that your domain sends messages that are not important or relevant. Too much of that behavior can eventually land your messages in the spam folder, even if you don’t use the word “free” anywhere in your email.
Remember that high engagement rates (opens, clicks, replies) are strong positive signals to inbox providers and help maintain your domain reputation. Your campaigns should always be trying to achieve industry benchmark levels of these metrics at a minimum. If you are consistently below your industry average, it’s time to re-think your content, subject lines and strategy to level up your game.
Deliverability Isn’t a One-trick Pony
Email deliverability isn’t a one-time project; it’s an ongoing process. By understanding the difference between delivery and deliverability, debunking common myths, ensuring your technical setup is solid, and maintaining strong list hygiene, you’ll set your campaigns and domain up for success. Prevention is always easier than recovery, but even if you’re facing challenges, improvement is possible.
For more resources or personalized help, reach out to our team. We’re here to help you get your emails where they belong: in the inbox.
