Bad Email Deliverability isn’t an IT Problem—It’s a Customer Experience Problem!

We’ve all been there: You spend weeks on an email campaign, putting together flawless creative and a punchy call-to-action. You hit send, only to realize half your audience never saw the email because it didn’t reach their inboxes.  

So, what happened?   

While deliverability blame is often placed on mailbox providers, email service providers, or even your friends in IT, here’s a hard truth: email deliverability is often a reflection of your relationship with your subscribers.   

It can be a tough pill to swallow, but there’s a high probability that your subscribers don’t love your emails as much as you do—and subscriber engagement plays a critical role in deliverability.  

Today, we’re breaking down the fundamentals of deliverability to help you create the best experience for your customers.    

Let’s begin!   

What is deliverability, anyway?  

In simple terms, deliverability refers to the ability to land an email in a subscriber’s inbox rather than in the spam folder or being blocked entirely. This is often confused with “delivered rate,” meaning the mailbox provider’s receiving server accepted the email. “Deliverability” is where your email actually lands after the mailbox provider accepts it.   

Why do mailbox providers care about engagement?  

Mailbox Providers (MBPs) like Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo have one goal: to keep their users happy. To do this, they function like bouncers at an exclusive club. If their users find your emails annoying, irrelevant, or intrusive, the MBPs will treat you as a nuisance and kick you out or prevent you from ever entering. Deliverability is simply the MBP’s way of grading your subscriber experience. If your subscriber engagement is poor, your deliverability will suffer—giving you a one-way ticket to the spam folder.   

How are mailbox providers measuring engagement?  

MBPs have built their filtering algorithms into sophisticated “trust detectors.” They look at your sender reputation—a score based on how subscribers interact with your messages. Sender reputation factors in both positive and negative subscriber interactions: 

• Positive signals: Opening the email, clicking links, forwarding the message, or marking it as “not spam.”  

• Negative signals: Deleting without opening, ignoring it for weeks, or the dreaded “Report Spam” click.  

Since your reputation is based on a combination of the above factors, it’s crucial to approach your reputation holistically.   

Mailbox providers are also committing to the subscriber experience by offering more user-focused controls to categorize, summarize, and manage email. These capabilities provide them with even more data to consider when evaluating your subscribers’ engagement.  

Annoying vs. bad actors: Different points of view  

A message marked as spam is the single strongest factor in filtering decisions. But when it comes to spam, marketers and subscribers often have different definitions. While marketers tend to think of malicious, dangerous messages, your subscribers likely define spam as any unwanted or irrelevant email.  

That’s why it’s more important than ever to send relevant, personal emails that offer value and provide opportunities for positive engagement. Here are a few tips that can help solidify your place in the inbox.   

• Permission-based marketing: Trust begins at the point of entry. Never use pre-checked boxes or hidden opt-ins when adding people to your email list. Use double opt-in to ensure everyone on your list actually wants to be there. This leads to higher engagement rates and lower complaint rates.  

• Data-driven segmentation: Divvy up your email list between subscriber engagement and interest to tailor your message to meet subscribers where they are in their customer journey.   

• Relevance: Power dynamic content like product recommendations and exclusive offers that are helpful, timely, and expected with zero-party and first-party data. 

• Interactive email elements: Use polls or surveys to collect more first-party data that helps you add personality to your email marketing strategy. 

• Empower your subscribers with a preference center: Don’t make your subscriber experience all or nothing.  A subscriber might love your weekly newsletter but hate your daily sales alerts. A robust preference center allows them to opt down instead of completely opting out, ignoring messages, or marking you as spam.   

• Kiss “NOREPLY” goodbye: Sending from a [email protected] address is the ultimate user experience fail. This tells the customer, “We want to talk at you, not with you.” Encouraging two-way engagement (actual replies) is one of the strongest signals to MBPs that you’re a trusted sender.  

• Make it easy to unsubscribe: Hiding the unsubscribe button opens the door for more “Mark as Spam” clicks, which will damage your reputation.   

• Use a recognizable sender name: If a sender is a recognized, reputable brand, users are more likely to open the message. Consider implementing BIMI to display your brand logo in the inbox.   

• Make your emails accessible: QA test and preview your emails before they reach subscribers to ensure they are optimized for engagement. This includes checking for broken links, missing images, or rendering issues that block engagement.   

The bottom line  

Email deliverability is a privilege earned through prioritizing positive subscriber engagement.  While technical setups (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) are the “entry requirements” mailbox providers have established to accept your messages, subscriber experience is the primary factor that determines whether you land in the inbox or the spam folder.   

Want to see how your deliverability stacks up against the global benchmarks? Check out Validity’s latest report.